In case you haven’t noticed by now, I am a minority, and I don’t just mean at hip hop shows. I think the only place that Black people can go and be a part of the majority is jail, but that’s only until hipsters catch on and then we’ll be pushed out of there too. My buddy who himself is Hispanic said to me the other day “Man, Puerto Rican girls are mean! They yell at you in public and everything!” Haa! Well yeah man, most ethnic women do, it’s just their thing. But it’s not just the women, the men get in on it too. There’s a short little black dude who sits near me at work and for the most part he’s cool; that is until the subject of hip hop comes up. The second you say anything slightly negative about it he starts spinning like the Tazmanian devil and goes into this tirade like you just dissed his mother. Easy guy, I know A$ap Rocky rhymed weed with feed but it’s not like he’s reinventing the wheel. The point of all of this is that we are passionate about life and especially music. So here are a few acts that this Black man thinks you should check out in the coming weeks.
If you can’t wait for SXSW to start and want to sneak out a bit early, here is a local kid (19) named Carson Brock who is releasing his second album called Finding Frames. He has been winning competitions since he was 16 years old and uses Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix as his inspiration. He’s got skill and there’s a lot of distortion in his music so he’s definitely got that going for him; my only reservation is that early on at least, he seems to be falling into the local Austin bluesy rock sound. I really hope that if he is as talented as he sounds at times that he doesn’t try and become the next Stevie Ray Vaughn. Rather I hope that he discovers his own style and helps Austin to continue to rise up from that huge shadow that Vaughn cast over this city. I will be at the show mainly because dude can play, he apparently has grown up a bit on this album, and I also get in for free for covering him. But it’s only $7 bucks so it shouldn’t be too big of a dent in your wallet. I am holding off rating him until I see him but just know that the company that is promoting him has sent me artists to check out before and this is the first that I thought was actually worth seeing. So hit it up.
After this check out the hip hop group Pac Div who was just recently added to an official SXSW showcase. They are from Southern California and have been in the game since 2006. They get love from Snoop, Pharrell, Questlove and almost every major hip hop magazine out there. When my friend first introduced me to them I thought they were from Miami because of the gully bass heavy beats they rhyme over. But after I did a deep dive I saw that their name was short for Pacific Division. They seem to have fun with their lyrics but not to the point that it comes across as gimmicky. They have the skills and the image needed to make it big, so do yourself a favor and add them to your schedule. I hate rating before seeing them but for now I give them a rating of FRESH!
I don’t get Flatbush Zombies. The name sounds fresh and there’s so much that you could do with this but unfortunately this duo chose the wack route. I get that in most music cultures smoking weed is considered cool but these guys almost take it to Afroman heights (no pun intended). Every photo you see of them they’re smoking and almost every one of Zombie Juice’s (again a fresh name) rhymes are about weed. But nothing seems original about his lyrics or his style. And I realize that not everything has to be original but at least make it good and sadly it just isn’t. To his credit Meechie Darko brings it but he is only on half of each track. You would think that coming out of NYC this would’ve been shut down immediately but like my friend says “there’s little pockets of wackiness everywhere man”. This guys are WEAK! They should go back to the studio and rap about how they are zombies yet girls give them brain anyway. Yes I laughed for about 5 minutes from my own joke.
Ok I’m done writing about hip hop for fear that a flying object will be launched at my head by Taz.
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