Declaime – Southside Story [album]
Twenty records deep in the idiom of rap, Declaime (co-owner of the SomeOthaShip Connect imprint) speaks from the wisdom and experience he’s earned in being a relevant artist who has made it cool to come from a sincere place all the the time without ever selling his soul to trends; like him or not, he’s pointing a finger towards the future aesthetic of rap culture through his latest effort: Southside Story.
Produced by Chris Keys, Bay Area board impresario responsible for gems like Oh No’s Ashes, and Georgia Anne Muldrow’s critically acclaimed full length rap debut A Thoughtiverse Unmarred, this record exudes a raw authenticity rarely heard amongst even the mainstream’s iconoclasts. A road less travelled has never been a daunting task for Declaime; one of the main gifts that he possesses is that he is indeed a natural, albeit skilled wordsmith.
The Oxnard, CA native flips the lens on street perspective as a whole; tragedy on the “block” transforms into world events and underworld characters materialize as smaller pieces in the puzzle of globalist agendas (which is indeed a true testament to how these situations actually occur).
“This is an accumulation of everything I’ve done in music, this is where it ends up for me until the next mission, the next record. [It’s the sum] of what I’ve experienced and of what I’ve seen. So it would sound like there’s a lot being said in it. But I try to say it as simple as I can, ’cause people tend to have a problem with what it is I’m doing. But I know what that is also….I’m speaking a totally different language than a lot of artists in hip hop. It’s not a hard language to understand, it’s just a language that’s been taught to be forgotten.” – Declaime
