ATL grinders Gideonz Army is back with a vengeance on the heels of a new album entitled Mainstream. G.A., known for their street savvy, bass heavy sounds, return after a great response to their debut album On Ten- as well as multiple older mixtapes. G.A.’s go out and get em attitude and in your face lyrics have continued to make them lightning rods for debate between their supporters as well as their detractors. Hate them or love them there are a couple things you cannot call G.A.- dull or lazy! In the last couple of years G.A. has grinded it out in public and private to be positioned as one of the most recognized groups in CHH.

The best veterans in any field eventually learn the importance of focused improvements. When you hear an athlete talk about how he is going to focus on a very specific area of his game during the offseason, people who know the game well enough to understand the importance of the improvement may get a justified chill. There's a point where you're set in your mold, whether it was self-imposed or self-created, and you focus on texturing the model you have in front of you instead of scrapping the statue entirely and starting from scratch. Yaves, formerly known as Street Pastor, falls into this category. He's been in the game for around thirteen years and he knows his lane. His hard work has recently paid off in the form of signing a deal with Xist Music, home to Ambassador and D.A. Truth. And in "History in Progress," the first tape to come out of the partnership, Yaves debuts a leaner, humbler, hungrier (if that was possible) product of self. 

Cellus is a young Christian hip hop artist hailing from St. Augustine, FL.  In 2009 he dropped his first album “J.O.E (Jesus Over Everything)” and in 2011 he gave us “The Drought” via True Lyfe Records.  The album recalls the everyday struggles of life and details how he deals with the issues and pains we all face as a Christians. I felt the need to address the project in a track-by-track manner, as I felt it made it easier review. There are a couple of interludes that I skipped over, but lets get into it.

I’m sure many of today’s CHH artists would love to be in Trip Lee’s position.  Many would love to have their music heard by saints and sinners alike all around the world.  To know that so many people will hear your thoughts and feelings must be the greatest reward an artist can receive.  However, as our Savior said, “To whom much is given much is required”, and this is what many of those aspiring artists forget.  To be an artist with Trip’s popularity carries a weight many can’t handle, especially when you consider the fact that with each album released there are more people to please.  Does this album please?

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True love for Christ is something that can’t really be faked.  Those who love Christ with their all can recognize when someone they’re listening to really loves God.  This sentiment really comes across in the Purpose.  This project exudes worship in rap form.  P-Lo and his team remind me of myself when I was just filled with the Holy Spirit.  Jesus was the center of all most every conversation I had and it felt like falling in love for the first time.  Their excitement for Christ is very refreshing.

If you made seven albums, with eleven years of music and touring under your belt, you would consider that a good run. However; if you’re KJ-52, or as the album purposes to speak, above the status quo, then to stop when you can keep going would be a failure. Dangerous seeks to communicate that we must live above the normal and not live dangerously to sin but in the will of Christ.

 "Now me, I live it by the golden rule: That you can love God, have fun and be cool"

If you've clicked over to Dasouth.com anytime in the past month, you've probably been greeted by the "Haha choose Chozen, that's right" intro to his 'Class President' music video. Whether you heard more than that before clicking the 'skip ad' button or not, you may feel pretty familiar to this 25-year old, Cali-based emcee. And if the impression you have of him is in line with his own self-declared mission statement above, you've hit the nail on the head. If it's not, it might be time to get familiar. 

Maturity and evolution can be a wonderful journey, it can also be as painful as it is rewarding. Along with the revelation of self comes the same revelation of how fragile life itself is. As we mature we find out those things we deemed important as adolescents don’t even register on the same plane of things we deem important as adults. As we evolve our views change,  tastes change, even connections to those who refuse to evolve with us change. Florida’s own veteran emcees, Rhema Soul now stand at that crossroad. Rhema Soul’s fourth studio album “Red” affirms that an evolution is taking place in their music and in their lives.

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"We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober." 1 Thessalonians 5:5-6

The parallels drawn between sleep and deception are not new, as scripture proclaims, but has recently been a focus in literature and cinema, often interpreted on the grandest scale in Hollywood. When looking at Inception or the series of Matrix films, each plots' premise is built around the manipulation of a person(s) mind while in the vulnerable state of sleep. Akron's own, Swoope, weaves together the concepts of those blockbusters with the infallible scripture on his sophomore studio album Wake Up.

There are some albums that when you listen to them, they are just simply musical. Then there are albums that can be considered musical projects.  These types of albums usually have a conceptual flow to them. There’s meaning and purpose behind every track and they all lace together smoothly.  They take one on a journey, utilizing sounds, words and instruments to paint a picture or throw you right dab smack in the middle of the circumstance to which the artist is talking about. Uriah Poore, gives us, The Stars and Their Places, an album that is a musical project of what Uriah states is “a collection of love, belief; triumph and defeat.”

You know those people in your life who pop up every once in a while? I think acquaintance would be the right definition. For my college people it may be that dude or girl in your dorm that stops in your room every once in a while, or vice versa, maybe you've chilled with in a large group, but who you've never had the thought 'I should kick it with them more' and when you don't get to say goodbye to them when you leave for summer break you don't text them and say 'sorry I didn't catch you!' Or maybe it's the coworker who you share 15-minute break conversation with once or twice a week. It's always a cool conversation but it's not the highlight of your day. All that to say that's similar to what I'm feeling with Flame's The 6th, an album that isn't weak or whack as much as it hasn't compelled me to hit the repeat button after a dozen listens.

Typically, when artists decide to combine forces like Captain Planet and the gang, the project usually sounds like two people brought two different visions. It either sounds like they combined solo songs or featured each other on their own tracks.  Fortunately for us, that’s not the case with this offering from D-Maub and Eric Cross.

The Seasoning. Life On Life. City Lights. When considering titles of J’son’s first three studio albums the first word that comes to mind is progression. Although the first time I heard J was on the 116 Compilation, the true start to my artistic understanding of him was with that debut album. Life on Life was the strong follow up, still my favorite to date, and then he continued his musical maturing with City Lights. Now, J’son brings us into how the Lord’s been pruning him on the new project, Growing Pains.

Bizzle and Willie “PDub” Moore Jr. are no strangers to doing a project together, so they have now come with a full album Best of Both Worlds. Near the end of 2010 they did a mixtape with the same name- adding Knowledge and Zeal to the title space- and a little more than a year later, they have come through with an offering I feel is something many will love and appreciate!

It was somewhere around my junior year of college that honesty and transparency become like a drug to me. It was a huge realization when I would hear peers, speakers or dorm conversations talking about things that I had always thought of as my struggle alone. Over the past couple years, my definition of transparency has evolved to not just include honesty about our struggles but also boldness of conviction that doesn't fade or become less visible in different circumstances. Toronto, Canada based emcee K. Poetic shares a similar vision in these eight tracks. Like he asks in the title track 'When you look at me do you see you when you see me?' The fact that I can answer that question with confidence after a spin through his debut EP shows proof of an artist who has captured his goal and has bigger ones in mind.