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by: Bryson Alford
“Sick of y’all with ya now or later raps; rap about it now, hope you get it later,” is an excerpt from Show you how off Jay-Z’s Blueprint 2 album. He demonstrated his contempt for less fortunate rappers who brag about money and cars or who just rap about a fantasy world they only live in their dreams, yet talk about it like its reality.
Upcoming New York rapper Eric Sosa may fall into that category from time to time, but few can do it with substance and finesse like Sosa. For Sosa, it’s deeper than wishful boasting to sell records; his poetry is laced with a philosophical gridlock that’s about as hard for him to dodge as it is for us to grasp. “I’m just a Spanish rapper from Queens, that's trying to escape reality, but trapped in a dream," Sosa said in a phone interview. That dream is to get in the rap game by the way.
Sosa’s psyche is stuck in a causality dilemma. “It’s like a loophole,” Sosa stated. He’s trying to escape his reality by occasionally rapping about that dream, in hopes of achieving it, yet that dream of getting in the rap game is what motivates his reality/rapping. “It’s like what came first, the chicken or the egg,” or in Sosa’s case the dream or the reality/rapping.
To say it is confusing is an understatement for some of us on the outside looking in, but one thing that is clear is he’s definitely one of a kind. As he would say, from his song The Heart, "I'm just cruising in the Camry trying to follow the Porsche, you going’ pull a damn hammy trying to follow my thoughts.”
You may pull another “hammy” trying to follow his style, which he adopted it from one of the greatest to ever do it. Loved by many, he scrapped his way to the top spot in the game; kicking’ up dust for years before he passed away. Yep, you guessed it: Bruce Lee.
Sosa adopted many of Lee’s philosophies for success, including the power of versatility, not just musically, but in life. “One thing Lee says is to not have a style; be like water,” Sosa said. “Whatever situation you are in, you become that, so it is important for me to not have a style.”
Sosa blessed us with versatility at its finest in his second mix-tape, Rhyme & Noodles: No Artificial Flavoring Vol. 1. His first mix-tape Let the Pete Rock was strictly hip-hop, but he showed his range as a musician in his second one, with unusual intentions. “My intentions were for every individual to only like one song off the entire mix-tape,” Sosa said. But I guess you should learn to expect the unexpected from an artist that says “you going’ pull a damn hammy trying to follow my thoughts.”
Occasionally Sosa may write about that fantasy world he’s trapped in, but his rhetoric is way too advanced to stop there, as he exhibited his song One You. “I talk about flaws, my good and my bad” in One You, Sosa said. “That’s just me putting everything on the table, and at the same time doing it ill, because that could easily be corny.”
Be sure to pick up his debut album coming soon.
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