Yours Truly

Somebody

The single most important quality in an emcee is honesty. Voice, melody, dexterity, personality, lyricism, sense of humor, songwriting ability, etc. are obviously inseparable from my enjoyment of the songs, but what compels me to really invest in an artist is authenticity. Honesty is especially important in hip-hop because of its narrative nature and the success of any narrator is dependent on his/her ability to earn the listener’s trust. I invest my trust carefully, but wholeheartedly, and when I give it, I usually let it go for life.Huntsville, Alabama doesn’t strike me as the type of place that tolerates fakers. If you wanna rap than you’d better do you because a town that small won’t hide lies long. So if you’re selling drugs and rapping about it than that’s cool, just speak from experience, report your reality, and do so without compromise. If that ain’t you than that’s cool too, it’s just as real to rap and hold down a job as it is to rap and hustle and rob.Case in point, DJ Cunta and Kristmas’ latest anthem Somebody is all about wanting to set a good example; to become “somebody without selling cocaine to somebody,” as Kristmas so plainly puts it in his country-fried and world-weary rasp.Please don’t mistake this for some Quaker crusade against gangster rappers with criminal pasts. Some of my favorite emcees (Freddie Gibbs and Pill for example) rap about pushing dope, hustlin’ hos and getting money all day. But those dudes do so with a painter’s eye for detail and a reporter’s thirst for facts. Subject matter can change according to the narrator, what must stay consistent is the narrator himself, from the first drum beat down to the very last verse.Much respect to Davey Boy Smith at Southern Hospitality for turning me on to this song.

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