The Beard is Back

How did this guy become a famous rapper? Freeway's technical talent is questionable, his subject matter played out. There's no way he battled his way to the top, or was spitting rhymes on the stoop and just happened to get noticed by some passing label exec who said, "I must have this." Freeway was never the protagonist in a hip hop fairy tale. And yet his music has something unnameable, some new hybrid of humor and heart, that is the product of a large, bearded man, half-singing rhymes in gravelly, high-pitched hysterics. And I don't mean hysterical like YouTube videos of drunk people falling down stairs, I mean hysterical like a man possessed, only in Freeway's case the possessor isn't Rage so much as Glee. You can hear it and feel it on every one of his tracks, there's a reason they move you and you just can't describe it other than the tired old list passion/fire/spirit/energy... Maybe we call it "Soul" because we think that modifier has some connection to authenticity and size of heart, but it's only so appropriate. Certainly taking on Jake One as producer, who strictly samples 70's LPs from the pinnacle of soul music, validates the transgenre comparison. But was Soul funny? I mean, is a Soul funny? It's hard for me to think of it that way, but clearly humor is an integral part of Freeway's music. Maybe that's the point of Freeway, to explode my notions of what is an authentic expression of soul, and whether comedy is a part of that. And this points to a definition of "original" music, music that forces you to think in a new way about something, or to think about something new. Somehow, we should be thanking Hip Hop for this, for allowing Freeway's voice to be carried despite its seemingly non-functional and atypical nature in the context of mass-produced club hits.

Freeway and Jake One have a new album coming out January called The Stimulus Package. Fingers crossed. "You Know What I Mean" (linked above), is the first leak.

Watch your back in the hood cuz hate come from all angles

Make sure you tote your banger

Never sell dope to strangers

Be courteous to your neighbors

I am Swayze, later!