New Orleans emcee Dee-1 has been forging through this Hip-Hop game for the past few years and just released his first major label project 3’s UP on RCA. Continuing to break away from the pack, the 6-song EP finds the conscious lyricists kicking more game about taking care of family and elevating the Black community and mankind while holding true to his mantra: Be Real, Be Righteous, and Be Relevant (3’s UP). Spitting nothing but realnesss, Dee-1 stings hard with poignant messages found on tracks like “Against Us” where he raps,
“The main ones you gotta watch be close to ya/ Black people we tore up from the floor up/ Back stabbing, conniving and plotting/ We need to grow up/ Every rapper talking’ about taking somebody girl/ Everything on TV over sexualized/ Man I really hate this world/ Black people robbing Black people/ Black people killing more Black people/ These are facts people/ Looking at my own people/Wondering if they plotting/ Smile so bright, heart so rotten/Pick you apart like cotton/ We new slaves hanging ourselves minus the noose/ Oops! I’m signed but still spitting the truth.”
Dee-1 also addresses the high Black-on-Black murder rates across the country and breaks down a first hand experience he’s unfortunately had to deal with. The haunting “My Student Got Murdered (Both Sides Of The Gun)” finds the game changer reliving a real homicide and being caught in the middle as the victim and the shooter were both kids he used to teach. With everyone fronting about being a gangster, Dee shows the hearts of both victims and why it was a tragic story all the way around as the chorus paints a vivid picture:
“My lil homey got murdered/ Got shot couldn’t run/ 4 times to the chest/ heart, heart, lung, lung/ And I know who did it/ Loved him like a son…”
It’s not too many messages in music these days and the N.O. MC whose rocked out with Lupe Fiasco Mannie Fresh, Killer Mike, Lecarae and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis just to name a few, serves a mini offering of where hip hop needs to go. Get edutained now and head on over to iTunes and cop 3’s UP. Dee-1 is really what the streets need.
Also peep his BET Back Room Freestyle as well as him murdering The Cypher below:
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