Music

Upcoming Minnesota artist 000Andre lets us feel the heat of the summer waving through in his energetic and fun single, “Switch Up.”

Reminiscent of the title, 000Andre switches up an outpouring of wordplay blending opposites in adjacent or even the same lines. Some stand out fragments of these include, “I’ma fix a wild nigga, my nigga shoot to care,” and “I got bad bitches, yeah I fuck ’em but I don’t kiss ’em… I’m lying to you, I admit it, I love these bitches.”

The summer atmosphere and positive energy already become established from the opening bars of a steel-drum-sounding synth loop, a chill vibe you could expect to pass by on a beach side—a vibe sustained throughout the track as a foundation upon which 000Andre switches up not only his play on words, but also his eclectic mix of hip hop, rap and R&B: Just half way into “Switch Up,” 000Andre shifts from lyrical rapping to vibe rapping with an R&B flavor. With the autotune triggered, 000Andre vibes a hovering melodic display.

In just one minute and fifty seconds, 000Andre flips through a wide array of desires, pleasures and goals, from love and sex, through beefs with others, through his money-making mission, through mentions of his little sister, and possibly other messages held cryptic in 000Andre’s context waiting to be deciphered. After its R&B-esque middle section, 000Andre returns to the original section he opened with, a first-rate showcase of using repetition in a short song to penetrate his main lines into listeners’ memory reserves.

But it’s not a track that aims at such a surgical analysis. You could have already listened to the song a couple of times by the time it took you to read this. Simply switch it on and let 000Andre switch it up for you.

000Andre

Every now and then an individual comes along who redefines the way we perceive a common perception. With rap, that individual is now Katiah One. Eclectic influences and a mission to change the perception of the average rapper erases the boundaries of the rapper we envision now, and reconstructs it anew.

Drawing influence from such artists as Freddy Mercury, Sam Cooke and Issac Brock, Katiah One makes his artistic goals clear: to impact the world positively. Throughout his new album, Fight the Good Fight, Katiah One’s positive energy is the common denominator penetrating every moment of every song. Vocally, Katiah One expresses total confidence through uniquely interesting flows that hold an impressive start-stop quality. Together with the production, giving such fragments a reverberated-to-heaven emphasis, Katiah One knows how to capitalize on his uniqueness, making them repeat throughout the songs to drill through the noise of the millions of rap songs uploaded today with memorable statements that formulate themselves into the listeners’ neural networks.

In the album’s first track, “We Livin’ the Dream (Nightmares)” he establishes this halting quality in the verses, hinting at it at the very beginning (“full time got us working on a life, riiiight, everyday I think I just miiiight”), and then he intensifies the repetition later on (“he got a lot that he don’t knoooow, got a lot that he don’t shoooow, say a lot that he don’t meaaaan”). However, Katiah One shows mastery of creating hooks from roughly 50 seconds into the track, using a simple-but-effective wordplay of opposites and repeating it to a point where the listeners’ ears bleed with strawberry ice cream from the constant pleasure-stroking of his hook delivery straight into the listener’s perceptual screen: “we’re living a dream, nightmares, we’re living a dream, nightmares, we’re living a dream, nightmares…”

DeeJay Element’s production already shines through with its own unique characteristics and strengths in establishing a four-chord-style vibe with subtle additions of intensities with added punch in the drums in hooks, while the melodic and chordal material more or less loops throughout—a perfect basis for lyricists to hover themselves in, around and through. Katiah One takes the guitar-looping beat of DeeJay Element, and weaves his style upon it in “What’s the Word About Now?” – the album’s second track. Katiah One uses braggadocio lyricism to paint his position in life in this song with a continuously rolling flow with numerous “oooh” moments of wordplay creativity.

In classic third track style, “Yo Yo Ho” changes up the feel. From the opening synth stabs, it’s clear that a different aspect of Katiah One’s life is about to hit home. At around the one-and-a-half-minute mark, the song takes a turn for the… interesting! It immediately made me think why don’t more artists do this? Katiah One draws back the pace half-fold, effects smudge the atmosphere, and without delving too deep, the sensation of an unclear faded absorbs you into its swaying vibe, and from its repetitive, dissolving “Yo Ho Ho, and a bottle of rum” Katiah One comes in, with a expertly-layered array of effects over the drums and vocals, rapid-firing some lines. Here, Katiah One clearly shows his eclectic influences coming through, and how he’s willing to go into avant-garde territory to portray a rare depth in the genre.

Lyricist flows unload throughout “Stop This,” padded together with a hook in Katiah One’s token start-stop emphasis with the reverb on the final word of each line that he’s branding into his output track after track: “All my people really want is them options, hey, all my ni…. really want is them hooooes, all my people want is hot shit, hey, can’t nobody really stop this, noooo.” Another hook constructed of a not-so-obvious word cluster that come together into a unifying harmony through Katiah One’s flow and delivery mastery.

Every one of Katiah One’s words sounds as if he has a message he needs to get out into the air, as if sweating through his pores. This is one of the aspects of his positive energy: the feeling that from within, he has something to give and he needs to give it. There is no audible, tangible way of defining this sense of motivation that comes across, or rather, the entire enveloping aspect wrapping every syllable crafts that energy into the overall experience.

Katiah One’s vocals and lyrics both communicate maturity, both in delivery and in content. The album’s fifth track, “I’ma Say What I Really Feel,” continues Katiah One’s “jabba-jabba-jabba-jabba-hook” style of flow as he accentuates the end of his lines and keeps the hooks repeating anthem-style with stadium-esque reverbs that fills the sonic space with his expansive vocals upon beats laid out like red carpets under his rolling ‘n’ stop highlights. “I’ma tell ’em all that I’m rich, ayy, I’ma let ’em know you ain’t shit, bro, I’ma say what I really feel, right, I’ma tell ’em all how to deal, ho” – get ready to have this hook streaming around your head with a four-chord piano-stabbing ostinato continuously playing throughout your days after listening to this gem.

“Pledge” is the album’s last track, a seeming word both to Katiah One’s haters and non-believers, and also to himself, as he states his up-and-coming place as an artist in New York City. From a first verse of a very personal deluge, he shifts into a torrent of his pledge to be a voice of truth in a big city (New York City) that has made a gush of big influential figures in the world.

Stream Katiah One’s Fight the Good Fight on Spotify » https://open.spotify.com/album/59dL8GMqSB94JXh5Mv0lGr

Stream Katiah One’s Fight the Good Fight on SoundCloud » https://soundcloud.com/okaynyc/sets/fight-the-good-fight

Follow Katiah One:

• YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/inspired07
• Twitter: twitter.com/OKayNyC
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/okaynyc/

The straight-to-your-face Boca Raton rapper V12 gets his priorities straight on the money in his single “What You Need” featuring Arenbe Williams.

From the opening distorted synth loop and grating sample, “I don’t care what she looks like, we don’t care what she looks like, as long as she’s attractive,” leading straight into the song’s hook…

I don’t need a pussy, bitch I need a bag
Can’t fall in love with hoes, ’cause I’m low in cash
If you ain’t talking money, I won’t answer back
And bitch if don’t like it, you can kiss my ass

I don’t need a pussy, bitch I need a bag
Can’t fall in love with hoes, ’cause I’m low in cash
If you ain’t talking money, I won’t answer back
And bitch if don’t like it – kiss my ass

…V12 makes it clear that he’s getting he’s out-prioritizing women with making money, and continues talking certain experiences with women that led ultimately to this mindset.

The beat and vocal outpouring is straight up: there are no emotional beat shifts or major gestures: V12 makes it clear he’s out to lay down what’s on his mind, and doesn’t care about the contemporary rap landscape of auto-tunes and over-produced adlibs.

The voice and production has a raw, grinding and raspy quality as V12 pushes out each line with an intensifying emphasis that leads to a climax. With total clarity and confidence, the rapper is able to penetrate his messaging upon the 808-bouncing beat, weaving the listener into his flow to focus in on his emphases. Arenbe Williams’ entries add different speeds and intensities, making the unusually longer over 4 minute song very listenable. Overall, V12  is clear, precise, athletic in his emphases, who shows that he can construct a song through laying down what’s on his mind.

About V12: V12 is a rapper from Boca Raton, FL. Now residing in Las Vegas, he is ready to let the world hear his sound after a 9-year hiatus from the music game. Previously in a music group as a young teen, V12’s music has developed into a mature sound. You can follow V12 on Instagram and stream his music on Soundcloud.

Follow V12:

• Instagram: @thecommission
• SoundCloud: @thecommissionV12