Prediction: Honesty in music is going to be big in 2011. In 2010, it was a foreign concept to a lot of popular music aficionados. It seems like the entertainment factor far outweighed the importance of “expression” or “relatability”. I’m not saying everyone needs to be honest. Shit, if you’re a straight edge cop but you wanna rap about being a filthy rich drug dealer, do it really well and I’ll listen (no I won’t).
There’s a competitive, boastful spirit deeply embedded in hip-hop, and I would never hope for that to go away, but with artists like Kid Cudi and Kanye West spilling their hearts out and being received well, I think it’s getting more acceptable to show some vulnerability. For me, it’s all about diversity. There’s room for a little bit of everything.
Intuition has been on that honest hip-hop for a while now and it doesn’t get much more vulnerable than this – Intuition got fired from his job and wrote this song about, in his own words, “being a scumbag”. It’s still unrecorded, but the video did have one positive effect:
This video in turn inspired E-Super (my Hellfyre Club labelmates) to take a vocal sample from my song “All I Got” and turn it into an electro-banger. Hope you enjoy.
