A-1
I’m sure XXYYXX’s “About You” is one of the most played songs in my iTunes. So when a number of rappers attempted to put rhymes to the beat some years back, I can’t say I was at all impressed. However, A-1 is the one emcee who truly did the song justice and made it his own, in my opinion. The Bay Area emcee crafted the gem, “Invisible Man,” dropping powerful bars while riding the beat like it was made for him. The song originally appeared on The Thurl Tape, and more recently re-appeared on his latest release, Thurlian. Much to my delight, he has now come through with a video just as dope as the song. Says A-1 of the track: "I wanted to set the scene for the late 80's, but as I was writing I sort of drifted off into another tangent... It went from being a song about my situation growing up, to a commentary about the crack era, and how that affected the people who were young adults in the 80's. I tried to draw a parallel between then and now, how we easily could've been crack addicts had we grown up in that time. I grew up hearing a lot of folks my age making judgments on homeless folks or people with addictions, I wanted to make it clear that any one of us could have found ourselves in that situation had the circumstances been different. Once the first line gets written it sort of just takes on a mind of it's own and in a weird way it writes itself.” Video directed by David Dutton. A-1’s Thurlian is out now.
