My name is Carlos St. John, and you can think of this as my formal introduction to the hip-hop community. I’m a rapper from Brooklyn, New York. And I already know what you’re thinking ‘annnoooother raaaapppperr’?! I’m laughing as I’m writing this cause I know exactly where you’re coming from. I usually think the exact same thing. Its exhausting listening to 1,000 mixtapes just to find 1 guy with 1 verse from 1 song that you might kinda-sorta-maybe like. Let’s put that to rest, I’m not that guy. And as you become more familiar with me and my brand of music, you’ll you’ll understand why.
These days I hardly turn on the radio. Actually, I’m starting to not even look at blogs (ironically I’m writing one). I understand that music happens in cycles. Usually there’s a streak of terrible music and then you get a chance to breathe, so lets just say I’m holding my breath right now.
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The internet was supposed to make it easier for people to access good music and in some ways it does this, but on the other side of the coin its also really easy to be forced to suffer through terrible artists and their byproducts. I wish in some ways there was a filter and I thought music blogs would serve that function but I learned quickly that their their loyalty goes to highest bidder. As a business man I understand this practice but as a fan of music it breaks my heart.
Its not all bad though, a handful of the new artists are talented and if not at the very least they’re really entertaining. Whenever Im being interviewed people tend to ask me ‘soooo, who would you like to work with’?, and my answer is always the same. ‘I like the team I have’ but this time I decided to think about it a bit more, and this i what I came up with; Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell, Ryan Leslie, Delta Goodrem, The Clipse. These are all very different artists but the one thing they have in common is they all understand music, essentially, THEY GET IT!!! Some people will never ‘GET IT’, and hopefully when you listen to music you’ll see the common thread.
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I dropped my first mixtape, ‘The St. John Portfolio,’ back in February. I called it The St. John Portfolio because It felt like showed all the different parts of me, all the little snap shots of what I present. My latest single ‘Breathe Again’. which an exclusive download to all you Global Grind readers should be a good starting point for you to see the full picture. I also shot a pretty interesting trailer for the mixtape called ‘The Destruction.’ The visuals were shot by Samtubia and Samgoma Edwards, the same duo who brought you theinfamous AirYeezy video. I wanted to give you something to look at when you were done listening to music. So take a look and a listen and let me know what you think.
