No promotion, no recognizable singles, no flashy image, no glamor, no controversy, no drug or violence stories to inflate curriculum, no fancy stories of shootings or murders or stays in prison.
Mississippi rapper and producer Big K.R.I.T has earned the right to fight for the title of the most reliable future promise of American hip hop with the sole help of his music.
It sounds strange, exotic, even more than one will seem boring, in these times that are full of excessive self-promotion, desperate promotion and absolute subordination to the image and yellow headlines, but here is the great triumph of this young author: to win a contract multinational with Def Jam, the admiration of other artists already consolidated and the unconditional delivery of the critics with a series of mixtapes – he prefers to call his recordings “free records” – that have rejuvenated and resized the rap from the South of the United States.
He has talent, work capacity and personality.
Early Years
Justin Lewis Scott was born on August 26th 1986 in Meridian in Missisipi. When it comes to Justin’s early days, thre aren’t many information about it.
He doesn’t like speaking much about his childhood days, so we will jump on to his career path right away.
Career Path
It all started with Hometown hero, an unforgettable half-time that defined and relativized success with two subtle verses, of surprising reflective ambition for a 23-year-old boy, and that was accompanied by a sample of Adele’s Hometown glory. This has been a fairly used resource in rap over the past two years – with the end of party already excessive in that EP of Urban Noize full of mash-ups of Jay-Z and Kanye West with refrains of the singer-, but nobody has been able to do better than Big KRIT, who managed to bring the emotion of the British singer to his own sensibility.
An irresistible song that was part of K.R.I.T wuz here, the mixtape that in 2010 gave him the repercussion and attention needed to win a contract and the expectations of critics and fans. This was not his first official street record, it was actually the sixth one, but it was the first one in which his artistic personality appeared.
A personality that was curious, fresh and novel because of its way of claiming a social stratum, that of the rap of the South of the United States and the singularity of its sound, its language, its lexicon, its geographical environment and its modus vivendi, from a expressive point of view at the antipodes of localism and regional militancy.
There was an artist who was respectful of his roots, but who did not close himself in a band and wanted to integrate very diverse influences and baggage – the New York hip hop of the early 90s, the soulful rap of No ID, Kanye West and Just Blaze – in a sound mosaic of undoubted and recognized debts with Outkast, Goodie Mob, UGK and Devin The Dude, or what is the same, the Holy Trinity of hip hop with denomination of southern origin.
They also disconcerted, for good, their lyrical purposes: bursts of positivism, social sensitivity, emotional introspection and content realism came to show that the topics are to collapse and that a southern rap is viable capable of going beyond the theme of club, night and hedonism.
This feeling of having found a pearl capable of leading the future of the genre was renewed and even sharpened with Return Of 4Eva -second step of a magic trilogy, and free, that completes the recent 4Eva NA Day and that has coaxed us without right to replica-, a release that had a lot of album to use and very little of mixtape -its gratuitousness, and already- and that supposed a conscious and lucid perfection of everything that its predecessor had projected.
The sound gained in complexity, textures and resonance, multiplied the possibilities of their beats and, above all, conditioned a more atmospheric and leveraged tone that reached its zenith expositive in the supreme The Vent, for whom this sign the best song of last year, not only because of its particular musical construction -ambient-rap? – but also because in it we listened to a rapper eaten away by doubt and existential and spiritual uncertainty that raised questions not common in a kid of his age.
But above all these aspects, Return Of 4Eva, which was leaked at the end of March 2011, already with K.R.I.T preparing its debut for Def Jam, came with a declaration of intentions of vital importance in his career. In American rapstar, one of the key moments of the tour, our protagonist said something similar to this: “Once an A & R told me that with 15 seconds you can determine the value of a song, but I overlooked that it takes 3 minutes and 40 seconds to understand what I’m saying.
” In times of polytones, iTunes, mp3 traffic and musical urgencies, the producer and MC defended the right to be listened to calmly and with attention and to explain themselves in their own way, without the agonizing pressure of billing immediate hit-singles or fast-food with date of expiration, and denied the idea that all rappers want to achieve fame, celebrity and Success on the fast track. Manifest signs of total author, with iron personality, in clear conceptual and almost moral confrontation with the stamp that has to publish his official debut.
4Eva N A Day, which leaked last Monday and convulsed the hip hop community in a few hours, insists on that idea. I would say that it even reinforces it. Musically it is an even more anticlimactic and unorthodox album: it dispenses with all external collaboration, fuses instrumentation and samples with great warmth and organic sense, includes a conceptual starting point -what happens the day after Return Of 4Eva-, intensifies the most introspective and night of his speech and, this time more than ever, he jumps to the bullfighter any attempt to hit a single or hit meridian. He goes to his, absorbed in his things, as if he did not give a shit about the reception and response of the public and the critics.
It’s melancholic crunk, jazz-rap night owl, soul-rap smoked, a bit of everything: hip hop wisdom from the hand of a firm candidate for star of the genre, who knows if a star misunderstood and mistreated by the industry.
For now, Def Jam has already delayed a few months the publication of its lake sunset, Live from the underground, probably because they do not find that single they would like to activate their antiquated and predictable promotional machinery.
In fact, in “Handwriting”, one of the songs included in this new release, KRIT talks about its situation, the problems generated by the seal the absence of singles related to their promotional intentions and, above all, their creative philosophy , exposed in an aphorism that already deserves to be framed: “I make albums, not hits” (“I make albums, not hits”).
Big K.R.I.T. net worth is estimated at around 400$ thousand. He is still a relatively unknown artist, but hopefully he will be able to raise this amount higher. So far, he has been focused only on music and songs, but maybe we will see him try his luck in other fields of business and show business.
Personal life
Justin played cello while he was in high school, and showed great talent for music from early on. He said that he started recording his own music, because he couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it.
He is very active on his social media and likes sharing information about his performances with his fans.
Quick summary
Full name: Justin Lewis Scott
Date of birth: August 26th 1986
Birthplace: Meridian, Mississippi
Age: 33
Profession: Rapper, Singer, Producer
Height: 1.82 m
Weight: 92kg
Net Worth: 400$ thousand
