I learned from reading his Complex interview that he was "Jay-Z's new favorite rapper" at one point, which I find interesting cause I've never even heard of the guy until this came out. This serves as the title track for his album Payback, which drops September 25th, you can read his thought process on the album below.
"I’ve watched countless artists release stellar albums, put on incredible live shows—you know, just be dope overall. But because they weren’t releasing twenty songs a week on blogs, or weren’t being courted by some big name artist, they weren’t able to get the recognition they earned. Or because they didn’t collaborate with Rapper X and Producer Z, their song can’t get any love from the blogs or radio.
Rappers emerge from nowhere with a modest budget, inflate their YouTube views and all of a sudden they’re overnight stars. Hell, I got TWO major co-signs, one from the biggest rapper in the universe, and people still don’t give a damn. They’d rather report about rappers being pelted with lemons as fucking news.
This is the state of the industry as we know it but it’s one of those hush-hush things that people are aware of, and won’t ever speak about. It disillusions a lot of well-meaning artists, myself included, and makes efforts to succeed in music seem futile. Plus a few assholes here and there will say ‘Oh he mad, don’t nobody owe him nothing’ when that’s not even the statement I’m trying to make, that I’m owed something or whatever. …
The concept of Payback, therefore, is to play by the “rules” in order to prove a point and exploit the way the hip-hop industry operates. …
The concept behind the album and the overall inner battle with my moral conscience was fused together to give Payback its storyline: a criminal who did a lot of bad deeds in the name of good now facing the consequences. I risked professional relationships, my reputation…like, so much stuff just to make a bold artistic statement."
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