Current Tunes I’m Diggin
Each week I’m going to write at least one post about my favorite artist that particular week. Of course I might write more than one (I probably will).
I gotta say, my top artist this week has to be Ras Kass.
I found two of his old CD’s in my brothers collection last week and listened to them but didn’t bother to put them on my itunes until a couple days ago. His rhymes are solid and his flow is incredible, especially considering the (sometimes annoying) amount of knowledge he seems to drop on every track. Some of his shit gets a little afrocentric for my tastes (Nature of the Threat comes to mind) but even that I can handle because of his delivery. He’s as deep as some straight up undie artists but what makes him so good is how he manages to mix that with street level gangsta raps. Only comparison that I think can do him justice both poetically and flow-ly is Nas.
Favorite song by him right now has to be Interview with a Vampire. It has him rapping from his perspective, that of God, and finally as the devil. At parts its a back and forth reminiscent of MF Grimm conversing with his dead brother on his masterpiece Scars and Memories, but the very begining is an amazing verse from Ras starting with this:
Inside my mother’s womb,doomed to return to the tomb.
Or was it from the dead I was raised?
All too soon to pay, on judgment day,
Is this beginning or the ending,
Died sinning, still winning, still grinning.
How can you not dig that? Now I just gotta track down his CD with the HRSMN… Kurupt, Killah Priest, and Canibus.
-Walt
Yet his best was his first; there was little of the elementary rhyming skills it takes to make up winning and grinning in Soul on Ice.