Coming up in the hip-hop game has never – and will never – be easy, but it’s been especially tough coming off of the hellish year that was 2020. Devastating for concert promoters and the live music underground, 2020 did many young rappers no favors, while others took advantage of the quiet period to get back into the studio and develop as much as they could. One of the few players to grow exponentially in the past year in his scene was none other than Emcee Monte, and in his new single “I’m so Black,” the credibility of the talent he’s cultivated from inside the quarantine is hard for even the most ignorant of critics to overlook. I had the chance to check out the track just recently, and it was surprisingly refreshing to hear to say the least.

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/emceemonte/?hl=en

Right off the bat, one of the first things I noticed about “I’m so Black” is the potential for live energy in the performance Emcee Monte gives here. He’s lighting it up between two distinct walls of white noise, alluding to a culture divide that has kept its foot on the back of Black Americans young and old for centuries now. His symbolism is cutting but not impossibly inaccessible due to any politicized narrative; contrarily, I would be the last person to call this a protest song over a single promoting the preservation of life for people of color everywhere. It takes more heart to compose the latter, and if there’s anyone who can do it, this rapper’s name immediately pops into my mind.

Getting into the compositional integrities of “I’m so Black,” I really cannot get enough of the bass in this mix. For starters, it melts directly into the percussion and seemingly creates a super beat that would be otherwise inescapable of oversized were there any other man straddling the spotlight in this piece. Emcee Monte does a good job of demonstrating how much of a trademark technique he’s got in this single, and although I don’t think he’s hit his highest mark just yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a critic alive that’s going to say this latest release isn’t a bar-raising addition to his discography. He has major ambitions, and if that wasn’t clear before, it’s made more than obvious here.

DEEZER: https://www.deezer.com/us/track/1064152292?autoplay=true

2021 is a big year for Black America, and thanks to the strenuous efforts of artists like Emcee Monte, it’s getting the soundtrack it deserves and then some. “I’m so Black” isn’t the first song of its kind to inspire a ripple effect in the press and among fans this winter, but for what it stands to potentially accomplish if given the right platform on indie radio, it’s one of the best tracks worth spending some time with this month. Emcee Monte is as real as they come, and provided he sticks with this present formula for success, he’s bound to see even more than he has in the years since releasing his official debut single.

John McCall

The music of Emcee Monte has been heard all over the world in partnership with the radio plugging services offered by Musik and Film Radio Promotions Division.  Learn more https://musikandfilm.com