Nigerian-American Gangster: kechPhrase - "Can I Flow?" (The Witzard Premier) *

Ever since it's 1975-80's inception, "the struggle" has been a consistent, underlying genesis of Hip-Hop. But anymore, the originality's long gone in mainstream Hip-Hop; These days, everyone's so manufactured and "cookie-cutter." The genre's final hope just might rest within Das Racist's collective of Brooklyn-based artists, producers, labelmen, etc. My attention was first drawn to [rapping college student] kechPhrase last Summer when he made a few original beats for Kool A.D. Since then, I've paid close attention to his career's gradual progression and I'm happy to say that we've stayed in touch throughout his blooming wave of early success. Chalking his past releases up as a test run, kechPhrase is prepping the release of 2 BIG companion projects: Slight Progress EP and Slight Progress (3rd World Dreaming).

"Can I Flow?" is the latest track from Slight Progress EP and shouts to Ikechi Nnamani for letting me premier it! The EP will precede Slight Progress: 3rd World Dreaming (Fall 2012), a conceptual thread of both efforts is "centered around success/making it from the eyes of a Nigerian immigrant." The latter will include roughly 12 tracks compiled for Greedhead an features from the likes of Kool A.D. Big Baby Gandhi, Epic, Bill Ding, Fat Tony, and Afrikan Boy. kechPhrase will handle the bulk of production work, aside from 2 Hot Sugar and Steel Tipped Dove-produced beats. "Can I Flow?" is essentially poised to serve as Nnamani's mission statement, of sorts... 84 lines-worth of free-associative rhymes. Complete with Pop Culture references galore, political statements, creativity, and odes to late 90's Boom-Bap: Magic Johnson, Nirvana, Gang Starr, Coming to America, Tyson-Holyfield ["the bite"], Dizzy Gillespie, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Jordan. Head on over to Prefix to check out a few recent kechPhrase tracks from February-March and keep and expect Slight Progress EP-LP to materialize shortly.

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