SONG OF THE DAY: Trill Burr

There’s so many creative geniuses operating out here in the wild that the majority of people have no idea about. Richmond remains a breeding ground for that energy, and I’ve never been able to figure out why exactly (and hopefully they don’t gentrify/pasteurize it away) but it remains an incubator of wild ass spirits. I still feel more connection to Richmond than Charlottesville, even after all this time since I moved. Lately I’ve been listening to Nickelus F like crazy. Dude is just straight brilliant, wandering through infinite styles, left and right (and all directions otherwise). It’s very inspiring to just hear a dude going off on incredible tangents constantly, and it makes you wanna do your own shit. You know there’s a ton of hard work, practice, and raw intelligence involved in doing that, but honestly man, if you feel inspired by a wild ass artist, that’s good, and part of what’s supposed to happen. Lockdown and make a thousand mixtapes.

I ain’t really trying to crush dreams, because we all gotta dream in this shitty cold ass world, but too many rappers (and really all artists) get attached to hyping themselves up and building online marketing buzz, without putting in the constant practice and work. You build a large volume of work, it’s like dandelion seeds, it’s gonna start sprouting somewhere, in the cracks over here, in a vacant lot over there… if you’re scattering your creative seeds enough, they can’t be stopped from blossoming. I feel like too many folks think there’s a shortcut to success (which there is – be born rich, so you can buy access to everything), but it’s not.

And the beauty of wild ass artists is that when you finally stop sleeping on somebody like Nickelus F, fuck there’s like this whole giant catalog of amazing shit to dig into. Your art you consuming ain’t got to be brand new. We’re not on no time-table here. None of us have to be pop culture curators of the newest hottest shit. In fact, you go find Nickelus F on bandcamp and there’s two Gold Mine releases of shit he found on a hard drive that you can pay what you want, and that shit all fuckin’ rocks as well.

I don’t know if people still read websites like this anymore. Hit up the comments with some unknown brilliance you’re aware of… let’s start connecting to this wild ass geniuses running around in semi-obscurity out here.