There have been lots of 2016 “who to look out for” blogs in the last month and they are generally all the same. Some copy and paste culture vulture stepping out of their comfort zone to tell us who they think we should be checking out, it’s usually about a bunch of rappers who have been in the lime light for quite some time, that’s fine. But, when I read Madchild’s name on a “up and coming artist to look out for” list it makes me want to start a small fire then go cry in the shower. Hip hop isn’t about personally benefiting off riding other peoples dicks (unless there is a 6th element I have not heard of. It’s about growing as an art form and benefiting as a culture together (as cheesy as that sounds), but that’s just my opinion. So, if you want to read about Son Real’s new puppy, Matt Brevner’s latest hair cut or an update on what Heatwave had for breakfast click on one of those generic flashy Todd-blog goof links… But if you want that truthful goodgood about some fresh, new lyricist then here it is, a list of well written, and spoken, young gentlemen that will lyrically rip you a new ass hole if you step up in a cypher
ROZMO
This guy may be brand spanking new to the scene but was born and raised on hip-hop. You can just tell the shit flows through his veins (having Vancouver underground legend Azrael as an older brother couldn’t hurt either). Buddy boy had a busy year, he just dropped his first album BROKE in late 2015 and followed it up with SIRENS within months, starting up a label “Beast Van”, dropping a video (the badger) and jumping on stage and killing it with the best of them whenever he gets the chance…cop that album free and feast your little face holes upon this goodie.
Aktu El Shabazz
I don’t know too much about this dude and the information about him on the interwebs is slim pickings. What I do know is that buddy is dope live, super comfortable on stage and kills it in the freestyle cypher! From what I hear, he’s linking up with Jakob Evolved and Observatory Records to bring us some fresh new jammy jams. What he has posted up on Soundcloud is sick: flows, lyrics, and a voice. The kid’s got its all. Go check his jams on soundcloud here
Sesh, Mercy & Genetics (formally Eh-yo)
These 3 talented individuals recently parted ways from the group Eh-yo and all went on to do solo projects. Sesh dropped his first self titled album SESH in 2014 featuring a fuck ton of local talent and released it on cassette (that’s trendy as fuck) following it up with some great low budget music videos (he also made one for Moka Only).
Genetics has one of the tightest flows in the city. He usually stays pretty low profile but he managed to push out a solo project called Chill Vibes last year using only his i-phone to record it, and it turned out great. I hope to hear a lot more from this dude
And last but not least, Mercy formally known as Brash. Although he dropped his kick ass name in exchange for Mercy and stopped swearing on wax, don’t be fooled, this is no bible thumping bullshit. Brash has been leaking tracks off his next album (a collaboration with Dj Ted-D aka Leaf) on Bandcamp and they are fucking ill! Peep game here
kids
The kids (Jakub Evolved, Kelvin, Mizzy, Munro) stepped on the scene a few years ago and instantly had the entire Vancouver hip-hop community backing them. So much has come out from this crew in such a short time including a collaboration with Vancouver’s legendary DJ KEMO, a bunch of solo side projects including Mizzy & Munro’s SPACE MONKEYS , Jakobs new endeavours with starting a label (Observatory Records) and so many shows! If you ever get a chance to check kids live, do it! The amount of raw energy these guy produce on stage is amazing and they are straight up flawless. Check out the 16 albums released in the last 3 years here
Got my Todd-Blog radar working.