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Dead End Hip Hop

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Watch the trailer for Donald Glover’s ‘Guava Island’ here

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With Donald Glover turning away from music and Rihanna herself always dipping her toes into other endeavors, the duo has combined creative forces to create Guava Island. The trailer made its debut on the last day of PHAROS, his annual festival. PHAROS has been described by Glover as “a gathering of the five intuitives of the human experience: tribe, ritual, experience abstraction, architecture, language”. In its second year the festival took place in New Zealand, premiering Guava Island on November 24th.

Directed by Glover’s longtime collaborator Hiro Murai, the trailer opens with Glover playing the guitar and singing while playfully teasing his on-screen girlfriend Rihanna. From there, the trailer segues into shot of him performing, dancing, running away, and held hostage. The most notable dialogue in the trailer from Glover: “We live in paradise but none of us actually have the time or the means to live here” speaks to the duality of living in what the West often describe as “destination getaway” while many of the natives are often left with the struggles day-to-day life

It will also feature Letitia Wright and Nonso Anozie. Watch the trailer for Guava Island below.

 

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I.S. Jones is the Managing Editor of Dead End. Her works have appeared in Revolt, NBCThink, and elsewhere. You can tweet at her here

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Swimming Through The Good Times: An Interview With Michael Christmas

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Artists who toggle the line of play and precision will seek life-long success. We’ve seen this  There are two kinds of rappers in the game: those who soul lacks music, who are here for a good time, not a long time and there are those who will be successful because they stay themselves.

Enter Michael Christmas and his fully-embraced, fun-loving, free spirit. His upbeat personality and his explosive catalog have propelled him into a world of fame with unlimited possibilities. From world tours to a new deal with Fool’s Gold, Michael Christmas has never once strayed away from enjoying the ride.

His latest album, “Role Model”, is a road trip into his past and a reflection of his life as a young adult trying to navigate the wild world painted before him. Nobody spins joy from the awkward quite the way Michael Christmas does, and in “Role Model”, the passenger seat is wide open.

Christmas’s father was in the studio throughout the recording process; the introduction is voiced by two of his younger sisters while vocals from his stepdad, mother, and girlfriend can be heard on skits between songs. The album is a side-step from what he usually delivers, but a sonic evolutionary journey nonetheless. Opposites attract and “Role Model” came together like Voltron. Growing up in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston ain’t for the weak of heart, but it will morph you into a person with the strength of ten Hulks if you let it. Aside from the amount of tequila he drinks and how often he swims, Michael Christmas is still the same person he was when he emerged onto the scene: moving through life with vivacious spirit but an insatiable desire for knowledge.

Matt Whitlock: How’s the reception for the album is going? I see it every day picking up more and more.

Michael Christmas: Hell yeah, I’m like really, really looking forward to seeing if it opens some doors and shit like that because that’s, you know, that’s what niggas put out albums for. (laughs)

MW: For real, right? Yeah, get the word out. The partnership with Fool’s Gold must be exciting, that’s a lot of leverage right there you know what I mean. You got a crazy cast over there already, you’re in good company. 

MC: Well, I’ve been having people come up to me, about that shit, for months now (laughs) like “Yo, I heard you on Fool’s Gold.” People I’ve never seen before in my life. All the time, coming up to me, talking to me and shit “Yo, you on Fool’s Gold?”

MW: You know damn well that’s gonna pick up more and more.

MC: Of course, I’m ready to start working on the next shit already.

MW: I bet you are. I’ve been listening to the album and there’s a lot of growth in there. Especially from “Is This Art” and other projects

MC: Thank you.

MW: It’s personal and you’re the same, but I was listening to [the album] and I did the Car Test the other day with it, sat in the whip and just vibed out to it. There’s a lot of personal shit, but it’s still relatable with ideas I feel other people don’t necessarily talk about.

MC: Yeah, I’m still not on that “Big Ass Rapper Level” yet so, I can still be relatable. I’m on my everyday shit like before you called me, I was cleaning my house.

MW: Facts. That’s what the people flock to; the fake shit only last so long.

MC: Still drunk as shit

MW: What you do last night

MC: My engineer and I were trying two different tequilas.

MW: What were you drinking, which ones? I work at a liquor store part-time.

MC: One of them was called Casa Noble, it’s from Mexico. My mom went there and she bought it for me, for a gift when she came back. He had this trash shit, some ugly shit some silver tequila and we were drinking both, trying to spot the differences and the differences were obvious very vast.

MW: Yeah I can’t drink tequila. I had a party in college and we played, I was like 19 years old, and we played flip cup with tequila. That was a bad choice—tequila. That’s your go-to? Tequila?

MC: Hell no! Cognac is my go-to but I just had that bottle, it was supposed to be special. So I drank half the other day and then last night I was like “I haven’t celebrated with my engineer yet” and we did this album together so I brought that to the studio and we just got smashed. He was very drunk like you don’t know Rob and shit, but he was fuckin’ belligerent drunk. I had a session, I booked an hour and I ended up staying for the next dude’s session.

MW: That’s fuckin’ hilarious. That’s chill though.

MC: It was cool, today, I got up like “Damn, I got to get my shit together.” My girl said her family is coming here today and we smoke all in the house, so you know I was just cleaning up the crib to make sure it doesn’t smell like weed.

MW: Get it all presentable.

MC: And then she just told us they’re probably not even coming inside, so I’m sick right now.

MW: Nah don’t be sick, yo, the best is chilling and sitting on the couch in a clean ass house and lighting up, just chillin’ in a clean ass house there’s no better feeling than that. There really isn’t, like everything smells mad good (laughs)

MC: Yeah no bullshit, because once my house is clean, I’m doing the same thing I do every time. I’m just walking around the house, smiling, looking at everything.

MW: So, a couple of favorites off the album, definitely “These Days” and “Everybody Eat” with (Cousin) Stizz, what’s your favorite if you had to pick?

MC: My favorites, well my favorite if I had to pick, probably “Upset” is my number one favorite joint. Then “Not For Me” and “Growing up” both make me really happy too. I teared up at the end of “Not For Me”. One time I was listening to it before it came out with the guitar solo at the end. It was the like day after we laid that down. It was my homie who works at Bodega. I was listening to it, while playing 2K and I just started tearing up when I heard the fucking guitar solo like “Yo, this guitar solo is so good!”

MW: That was beautiful.

MC: The thing is, it took him so long to do it because he kept trying over and over and over. Trying different shit and I was like “Yo, play this next one like you won’t get to play it again. Play it like we’re at a show and if you fuck this up, you just fucked up the show.” That’s when he played the one that we kept, so everything came together so tight, it was like a movie.

MW: He just needed that little bit of push.

MC: Yeah literally, halfway through, he would stop like “We got to clean that up” and I’m like “No, we’re not cleaning shit up.”

MW: I’ve noticed that, especially with live music players, in studios, they’re even more particular than artists or producers are with something that you may not even hear, that they hear.

MC: Exactly. There’s another track that you had, and I can’t think of the name of it off top, but it was about one of your teachers. They gave a speech about how it was for you growing up and you said he was talking to you about how you came home and you thought everyone’s family was like your family. Oh yeah, yeah, that was “Growing Up”.

MW: Yup

MC: So what happened was, this girl said her parents were going to pick her up from school and I was confused by that because both of my parents never do anything together. They didn’t live together so I assumed, I was confused, I was like “Your parents live together? Parents don’t live together” that’s what I said.

MW: What age was this?

MC: That was in kindergarten or the first grade.

MW: Oh, yeah, you were just confused.

MC: Yeah I was so little, I was just like, “What The Fuck”, I wasn’t sad or anything. I never dreamed of having my parents be together because they were never together. There was no like “Oh, I want my dad and my mom back together” or nothing like that. Yeah, it’s just two grown-up n****s that I call every day

MW: Listening to that, it was tough to listen to, not tough but you could feel it. The song had already hit you. So when that speech came on, it was already a beautiful song but my arm hairs started to stand up a little bit. It was like, anytime someone you know, or a teacher is talking about an encounter with a child it’s always going to draw some type of emotion. When it’s something that has to do with family, it fit beautifully.

MC: It’s wild because since I started dating my girl, I’ve learned more about how people grow up and shit. She grew up and had the perfect school career and was a good kid. Her mom was a great mom and her mom was older. You know, my mom was young and dad was young. My family is all over the place (laughs). We’ve been all over the place, so I’ve learned that I grew up very different from a lot of people. I went to like seven different schools, mad shit. So, recently, I’ve become proud of some of these, I wouldn’t call them setbacks but I call them differences. I’m just different and these differences are what made me this way.

MW: Exactly and now you’re realizing it at a perfect time in your life, where it fits the music that you’ve already been making.

MC: Yup, we had a party the other day for the album and my mom and my dad were in there, fucked up with me. My mom was clutching the champagne bottle all night and I’m like “Nobody’s parents are doing this.” Nobody’s parents were turnt up like mine and it’s funny because all my life, all the other kids always said they wish their parents were like my parents.

MW: It’s funny to think about how you were confused about all that and now, it’s like the dynamic that they had when they were not together, kind of made you, well it made them, more of your homies than traditional parents. So now looking back, people are like “Damn I wish my parents were like that” when most parents were traditional family parents, so you wouldn’t think of it that way.

MC: Yes exactly, it’s more from my dad really because my mom was pretty strict when I was a kid. She was on my ass daily, yelling a lot. Now that I’m grown, and I could take care of myself, she comes to me when she needs to talk. I’m like the only adult that’s not connected to the rest of the adults in her life like that. So, I have my own outside perspective.

MW: So she can appreciate that.

MC: Whenever she needs to talk to somebody, she immediately comes to me and I’m like “Whatever you need”. You know my mom is the homie now but it wasn’t always like that. With my dad, it was always like that. [My dad and I] bet that my mom wouldn’t show up to the party, even though I knew she was coming. She doesn’t usually come, she doesn’t usually go to shit because she doesn’t like being out with all the young people. So I called her the day before the party like “You know you got to come” and she was like “Alright.” So she pulled up with her homegirl and we were in there getting folded. One of my roommates is a huge fan of my mom, she wants to be like my mom when she gets older, and they were getting drunk together, it was funny as hell.

MW: So you mentioned Bodega a little while ago. Everybody knows there’s a relationship with you and Bodega there, can you give a little info on what Bodega is to you and how it influenced your career as an artist, as an individual aside from music…?

MC: Well, Bodega, more than anything, is a place that when I was always down there. I just wanted to shop there. Everybody in there was dressed so cool and anybody who was coming in there was buying fly shit. I always wanted to be able to do that but I couldn’t. Then I really wanted to get a job there when I was like 16 or 17 and they wouldn’t hire me but I was still coming all the time, with my friends. At one point, we got in trouble there so much that we weren’t supposed to go there anymore. Fast forward, we’re in town, we start doing our rap shit, it’s working and we’re cooperating.

We’re not fucking the store up (laughs). Now, it’s a hub for us to go get kicks, we buy shit and we know everybody that works there. There’s no reason not to kick it there and it’s kind of a central location because of where it’s at in the city and when you go there you can get anywhere from there. Whenever I need to kill time, I just go kick it at Bodega, chop it up with them, buy some shit, they always hold me down with the kicks. I just got them off-white ones, we went there the other day, you know what I’m saying. They’re just the homies, but more than anything else, I don’t feel like any other stores here really hold a candle to them. As far as what they do with the streetwear, selling kicks, the style of the actual store itself, everything about Bodega. I think it’s just better than all the other streetwear shops in the city, that’s really what it is.

Yeah, they do a lot of cool shit, they throw the homies little fuckin’ modeling gigs, every once in a while. A bunch of my homies, who didn’t even have a job, like, I’ll go there and they’ll be there working now and I’m like “Oh shit, you work here now?” They always support me, for the most part, when I go in there. They always know what’s up when I put out albums, they held them down, they carried my merch in there for a little bit when I had my hats, so it’s just the spot.

MW: For real, I don’t want to keep you on the phone all night, so the last question: what’s something the average fan might not know about you? Something they might not be able to find in another interview?

MC: Oh alright, I’m really good at swimming, like I’m nice.

MW: At swimming? Like you can do the high dive and all that?

MC: Nah, I can dive but I never dive off like the big ass platform, but I can dive. I was trained in all of this shit. I went camping for like four years straight and ended up being a junior lifeguard, so I’m nice at swimming.

MW: Wow, so did you compete or anything? If you were a lifeguard, you had to be pretty serious.

MC: No, every day there were two forms of swimming. They had an instructional swim [course]. If you were good, you used to do drills the whole time, and that’s what I was doing by like my second session. Then you have a free swim [lesson], everybody kickin’ it or whatever but during an instructional swim [course], they’d have us doing shit because we were 12 foot [deep]. They would throw this, like, black brick at the bottom of the pool and they would do shit like you’d have to dive to the bottom of the pool and get the brick and swim up to the top but you can’t kick off the floor.

MW: Damn, that’s intense.

MC: Yeah, drills like that, doing like five or six laps down the whole length of the pool, I should be shredded. (laughs)

MW: (Laughing) Are you still swimming?

MC: I don’t have a place to swim. The last time I was swimming, was me and my DJ, did a show in Michigan and the hotel had a pool that was open all night. There was a basketball court right next to the pool, so we hooped for like 2 hours and then we went swimming for like 2 hours. That was like the last time I got to swim, but I realized I still got it.

Role Model can be streamed below:

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Matt Whitlock manages a liquor store and listens to Rap music. He also enjoys short blunt walks to the refrigerator, watching movies with the sound off, and just plain chillin’. You can tweet at him here

Thank You, Mac Miller

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Thank you Mac Miller.

And I’m sorry. That’s the first thing I want to say and I’m sure it’s something a lot of us would say to Mac Miller if any fan got to see him before September 7, 2018. Because as of that day, we lost one. More specifically, I did.

There are plenty of artists I have grieved for and still do whenever I play their music; however, when it comes to Mac Miller he was different. He was someone that helped me acclimate to my new life.

In August 2011, I moved from Dallas, TX to Greenville, NC to live with my dad. It was just before the start of my sophomore year in high school. It was a time where I didn’t know anything, really, because I was still trying to understand who I was in the world. While I had been in the area before, I didn’t live there. I had no friends. All I had was my dad and music.

I was nervous to talk to other kids but the music was my entry point to other people. I could speak about it and my presence was known.

I was on every new release but it wasn’t until Blue Slide Park came out that I couldn’t join the conversation. The discussion had shifted to someone who I had no clue about. I had to ask my classmate, Kelsey Holder, who he was. Come to find out, he’s a rapper from Pittsburgh who was only 4 years my senior. I had to find out what all the talk was about so I downloaded the project, listened, and found something and someone special.

I was on a bit of a high horse when I was 15 and didn’t listen to rap like that. What did some white kid from Pittsburgh have to teach some fifteen-year-old black kid trying to figure it all out…? He helped me find a part of myself I had lost in trying to find other things. From there, I went back and download K.I.D.S. and Best Day Ever with the latter being one of the projects that really shot me over the moon. “Wake Up” was the morning jam I played on the back of the bus.

As the years went by and I got older, so did Mac. Growth that I don’t think anyone expected him to show emerged; he gave us steady, progressive change that was reflective in other people’s lives. It’s part of the reason he resonated with so many younger fans and opened doors for older fans to appreciate him. Before most, he was one of the first real, relatable guys of the new school. He was unabashedly human.

But of course, like anyone who ages in hip-hop and isn’t on top, jokes were thrown his way. A lot of them too. Not reflective of his character but any white rapper that appeared on any preppy frat boy’s playlist was ridiculed. Ask Asher Roth. Even if they have shed that persona ages ago, it’s an easy point to pick at for any “hip-hop head”. It was unfair but life doesn’t care about unfair.

Stating himself that fame had been one of the reasons, Mac struggled with depression and substance abuse. He never strayed away or hid it from his fans. It was a fact he made clear on 2014’s Faces. It was my last year of high school and by then I wasn’t listening to Mac as much as I used to but I still respected him a lot. It was the year I finally tried to get help for my depression. Mac was open for anyone to look and see him. He also advocated for bettering one’s self even when he was done. It was another part of himself that he didn’t have to share but he did. And I wanted to do the same. So I gave part of myself to others to find love.

Now it’s 2018, I have graduated from college. Mac Miller has long graduated from the young class to a young vet with almost 10 years into the game. We had both made strides in our life. Still struggling but working through demons. It’s August 3rd and Mac releases Swimming. His fifth studio album. It so happens to be on a day that also has the major releases from Travis Scott and YG.

It’s a hectic hip-hop day but instead of listening to the others, I want to listen to his project first. For the simple reason, that I might find something in it that’ll help me again. Why? Because it’s the Friday before I made another big transition of my life by moving from Greenville, NC with my dad to Decatur, GA that Sunday. I thought more so than those other projects, that I would find some solace in his because I was in a rut. I didn’t have a job yet and I only had enough money to last me a month. Like that album in high school, I needed something. So I went to Spotify and pressed play. While it didn’t make me feel the same way Blue Slide Park did in high school, it did something else for me instead. It made me feel okay and that was all I needed.

Fast forward to a little over a month later, I’m at work. It’s a slow day and I decide to check my phone just because I was bored. So I go to Twitter and I’m scrolling and I see Mac’s name. Thinking it’s a new song, I scroll back up. But instead, the news brings tears to my eyes: “Mac Miller has passed away at 26”.

I keep checking my timeline to see if it’s true and I was unfortunately right. It was real. My throat was dry. I couldn’t speak. I was in a daze. My co-worker asks me if I’m okay. I said, “I don’t know but did you know Mac Miller?” She says no and I start to describe him and the tears well up some more and I have to go to the restroom for a sec. Just to wipe my eyes.

Mac had helped at two pivotal moments in my life. I never went to a concert and I wasn’t the biggest die-hard fan but his death hit me. More than I honestly thought it would. I didn’t expect someone four years my senior to suddenly pass. It made me think about death and the brevity of living but then I listened to his album again. Like I am now. Even with water welling up my eyes, I know it’s going to be okay. He gave too much and changed too many lives for me to wallow in sadness. It wasn’t what his music was about. He was more than that. It’s obvious to see when no one has anything bad to say. Hip-hop and fans alike collectively mourned for a soul that made them feel better without trying.

I salute to Mac Miller because he didn’t know it, but he helped me grow and find parts of myself. If there is a heaven, I hope you’re finally at peace.

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Tyler Jones is a freelance writer based out in the ATL area.

 

Hip-Hop Steps Outside of Himself: White Supremacy & Hip-Hop

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I don’t trust white people. I have lived long enough to know that feeling any empathy for them can and will kill me. The stakes are high for Black folks in America and I don’t have time to waste. Hip-hop works in similar extremes, with little grace and generalizations that serve its own survival. Hip-hop works to find ways to reinvent itself all the time; whether it be Gogo music, mumble rap, or random subcultures, Hip-hop has always meant varying things to Black people—all made at the expense of needing to find joy and a voice out of the muck of this world. Hip-hop at its core is about Black culture and the ability to subvert the systems that work to try to kill us.

Yet, it would be naive to think Hip-hop doesn’t exist in a world of labor exploitation. A world ready to make any song, person or trend cultural capital for the next ad agency, all the bite pulled out with the bones barely hanging on.

I read The Tanning of America by Steve Stoute when I was 16 years old. At the time, I thought I wanted to do the same thing as Stoute. I wanted to break glass ceilings and get into those boardrooms that made the big decisions. It took 4 years and some life experience to realize Stoute was wrong; that Hip-hop is, in fact, Black in every way possible and is an act of resistance in its primal state. However, it is still, in many ways, a good ol’ boys club. I began to realize that Hip-Hop throughout history wasn’t growing to hold more ideas of blackness but that it was simply becoming a beacon of capitalism that I never knew to fear.

Via Youtube

It feels like blackface in action to see a white person rap and be given more praise than the people who put bone to concrete to build this thing we call hip-hop culture. How did they learn to speak our language? To steal a thing we kept hidden? To have successfully stolen our tongue and I have to bob along to the music. Not because I want to but because I could be killed for questioning why the white person is even allowed in the room…most times by the black men in the room. Rap is a sport—a sport that favors those in power; one where I have to write about how we should give Macklemore another chance while black queer artists are still ignored regardless of their talent. It is a balancing act, to be in the culture but also on the chopping block.

I can never really tell if white artists care about the culture or are simply good at avoiding questions. And If I’m being honest that’s what it feels like…a convenient costume that can be altered to make it in this industry.  Where they can be on a Coachella stage one year and then next defacing the thing that put the silver in their mouths. Normally it takes an EP or at least a solid project until I can buy into the idea/notion that a white artist isn’t repeating the legacy of colonization that has plagued black and brown folks for centuries. But most times my cynicism stops me from giving most a second chance because I know the culture will praise them regardless of my opinion.  

That white boys with grills in their mouth, humble beginnings and enough lyrical talent to make it to the stage are praised for doing the bare minimum. A bare minimum that gets lower day by day. White supremacy shows up in how little grace we give to women in rap to fail, it’s about who we let in the door and most times it is never black queer artists.  We can see it in how whiteness is centered even when it isn’t in the room. It shows up when you try to pitch to publications about black queer rappers but editors only want to hear about Lil Dicky’s latest single with Chris Brown.

It is exhausting but I can’t run away from it.

Capitalism and White supremacy are big words but they show up in similar ways.  Capitalism tells us we can only work with what makes the most money and that thing is always whatever is closest to whiteness or has the most cultural capital. Capitalism is always looking to silence those of us who have no choice but to have to write the thing anyways. Who have bills to pay and not enough clout to say no. There is no space in hip-hop to question white rappers, to ask why they are here? To ask why they can spit 16 bars on Hot 97 but can’t speak on their own privilege? To take and never give back?  To critique why we feel awkward questioning the racial elephant in the room that we didn’t create?

That’s the joke of it all, that black folks have ownership of anything, that even the black folks running the culture are also selling us down the river. The world tells black folks that we have to be accommodating.  That we have to let white folks get a piece of the pie even if we never asked them to join in. White supremacy looks like white men running hip-hop critique, looks like only using black writers when it allows the most clickbait but never a staff position, it looks like black women in rap supporting abusers in order to stay relevant, it’s a 17-year-old black rapper falling for the lie of upward mobility while sitting in an empty mansion.

via Gazette Review

It’s all a joke really if you think about it, a system set up for us to fail, a tragedy in many parts, white women becoming hip-hop influencers as they step on the backs of black women, realizing most of the best rappers in history have all abused the women in their lives.

It’s hard when you realize the culture you love will never love you back.

It’s all a joke I never get to laugh at. 

 

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Clarissa Brooks is a Staff Writer with Dead End Hip-Hop. You can tweet at her here

PNTHN Brings Us Their Sophomore EP “Potluck”

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I love how my generation is determined to continue the tradition of the rap collective. Here, the easy comparison would be to measure PNTHN (pronounced ‘PANTHEON’) against BROCKHAMPTON or Odd Future, but the collective genius group from San Marcos, Texas possess far too much potential to sideline them with what we’ve already tasted. Since their formation in March of 2017, the rap group has to come be a sonic amalgamation of Southern rap, 90s hip hop, soul music and new school sounds. In a city already rich with culture, PNTHN is carving its way in the bubble of Texas hip hop that’s getting ready to burst. The ten members of the group — seven rappers and three producers — work together to seamlessly blend New York-style rapping over Texas-style production, creating a unique style the region has been waiting for. It’s a flavor I’ve been waiting on too.

‘Potluck’ opens with the low-swinging, high-hat, heavy bass “CHUMBUCKET”, a song that effortlessly sets the tone for the 6-track EP. Imbuing all the delight and grandeur of youth, easily my favorite track on the EP, “VILGANTES”, which lulls its audience with a gorgeous background of pianos and synths. I would declare here, one of PNTHN’s greatest superpowers is the ability to move as a single collective voice through various bodies, yet it never feels rehearsed. There’s a natural synergy, a single thread, which binds them all together. Perhaps you could even call it a trust fall of music, how each vocalist knows when to pick up the song right as the other passes off the baton. Another delight in this song are all the allusions to some of childhood loves: the legendary Pokemon, Zapdos, Spiderman, Dirty Bubble (from Sponge Bubble), Aqauaman, Man Ray, Barney Rubble (of The Flintstones), etc. and also this gem of a bar: “I hate to save the day when I barely just clocked in”.

Some tracks are more playful than meditative such track three “MEWTWO”. An anthem brimming with bravado and bombast declarations, each voice delivers the hook at a more erratic pace compared than where the EP has been headed so far. Much like a group of young men horsing around and seeking to impress one another, each voice on this track is much more distinctive, seeking to prove their ever-growing greatness. “VALENTINA” picks up the upbeat pace once again with sharp high-hats and the transition between the previous track and this one shows me emotional range is one of PNTHN’s greatest assets. Tyler, The Creator here feels like a heavy influence on this specific track.

Six tracks proves to be the exact sweet spot for PNTHN’s sophomore EP. This choice shows me two things: one, the collective is very aware of who they are in music, they’re  aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and two, it makes me wonder if they too feel they still have lyrics to go. Overall, I found this EP to be exciting, playful, and rich in sonic dexterity. I’m so fascinated to watch their growth as a group and I can’t wait to see what other offerings they have to give the world.

You can listen to ‘Potluck’ here:

 

Back cover of “Potluck” including the producer’s name

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I.S. Jones is a writer living in New York by way of California. Please send her pizza, not nudes. Her inbox (on Twitter) is always open, so send her a track or a hello. She is hanging in there and is grateful for hip-hop. Tweet at her here

 

Honcho Supreme: When Negro Spirituals and Hip Hop Collide

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Often I think about the legacy of Black people across the diaspora and it seems to be the case we have a remarkable ability to spin gold out of table scraps or tragedy. From Negro Spirituals, to the Blues, Rock, and Hip-Hop, Black people have found salvation in music. When there wasn’t a way, time and time again we made one. We made our tragedies so extraordinary with music and the written word, the world had no choice but to listen. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve done all we can with this genre, if hip-hop has reached a plateau, but then a newcomer reminds us this just can’t ever die.  Honcho Supreme (or Honcho Pop, as he is called on his mixtape), a rapper hailing from Marrero, Louisiana, reminds me hip-hop still has so much to show the world.

In a stripped down version of his song “Dedicated”, which opens his project DEDICATED, Honcho Supreme‘s deep, scratchy voice is reminiscent of what I imagine a gathering around the fire on the plantation would have been like–the knee-slapping, snapping, chest-beating to conjure the beat, that ancient, guttural, howling pain only music can soothe–except now the Spiritual has left the plantation, surviving centuries of iterations to come alive for this moment.  But there is hope here that better times will come. I’m officially, unofficially coining this–what I would boldly call a new sub-genre of hip-hop–Hood Spiritual.

“Baby momma kicked me out for the last time so it’s back to the trap for me” is the bar that opens DEDICATED. From there, the rapper walks us through a tour of the broken sidewalks, boarded-up windows, and destitute image of his situation. While many, many rappers before Honcho Supreme have doled out bars about having a harsh life, it feels as though the rapper is pulling from the past while blending elements of trap. Maybe these are Trap Spirituals? Hood Spirituals? Who is to say just yet. Maybe this was complete happenstance that Honcho and his homies Zacquiri King (@ZacquiriKing_318 on IG) and Poka Bantana (@PokaBoi on IG) were just high, playing around and stumbled on gold. And isn’t that how many brilliant musicians find their genius?

Being frank, this stripped down version is much, much better than the original. I say this with all love: I believe Honcho Supreme more in this version compared to the original. Before this, he was hiding behind beats which are not in service to him and his lyrical caliber. At. All. This version shows a rapper who knows his voice, who knows who he is, and isn’t fazed by what competition may come his way. I melted when I heard this Honcho Supreme. I want more of this and I hope he delivers.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Again, here’s the link for the project. Video of the stripped version is below. Enjoy y’all.

 

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I.S. Jones is a writer living in New York by way of California. Please send her pizza, not nudes. Her inbox (on Twitter) is always open, so send her a track or a hello. She’s still catching up to her 2017 to do list. Tweet at her here