PUTTING KANSAS CITY ON THE MAP

By: Micheal Wilton

It’s hard to understand David ‘Mac Lethal’ Sheldon if you’ve never been to Kansas City. Because Mac, much like the city he calls home, is evolutionary and eclectic—a hybrid of East Coast, West Coast and knowing when to ignore the hype and just have a good time. “I think what Kansas City has to offer the hip-hop scene is that we’re right in the middle. You start heading west and people are a little more smoked out, you go east and it gets a little hardcore, but we’re open to influence from everything else.” This Kansas City no-coast ideology is why Mac can describe his style as “a little rap, a little folk, a little comedy” and, if you hail from the Midwest, you’ll nod your head and go yeah, okay that makes sense. 

Recently, Mac has been spending most of his time driving around, plotting the soundscape for his next project: “the beats are going to sound really good in your car, whether you’re driving to the bar or out to buy a birthday present for your mom.” The quintessential driving jam is something anyone who spent their formative years in the Midwest can appreciate, which Mac sums up by saying, “Riding around in the car with friends has been a staple in my perception of youth and life.”

This upcoming auto-friendly album will be Mac’s second release from indie powerhouse Rhymesayers, but true fans keep their eyes open and ears to the ground for his mix tapes and upcoming DVD, “Bald and Beautiful”, which he’ll be releasing via his own label, Black Clover Records.

Mac Lethal’s style is enormously catchy and overtly unapologetic – which I guess is my euphemized way of saying he sounds as white as he looks. But that doesn’t mean he sounds like a certain cherry-pie-baking housewife from R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”. Hopefully as the Kansas City hip-hop scene continues to gain national foothold, the KC no-accent-whatsoever-all-consonants-fully-pronounced style will no longer be interpreted as a twang. And hopefully, as KC continues to produce artists like Mac Lethal, no one will struggle to describe the style of hip-hop that comes out of this bizarre and surprising metropolis.     

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