Terrorbird

Every now and again, a rap record comes along that effortlessly walks the line between street-tough, gangsta grit and charming, disarming humour and intelligence. Think Nas' or Gravediggaz' first records, or Blueprint-to-the-Black Album era Jay-Z; confident, hungry, quotable and immersive music that you can listen to on repeat and lose yourself in for days. We're pretty sure we've found one of these records, and in comes in the shape of "True Hollywood Squares" by LA rapper Kail. The buzz started in his hometown, on the lesser documented streets of Hollywood, away "from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's sh*t" and smack in the middle of the "real motherf*cking tinsel town," in the "shady hiding spots for all the crooks from the sets." Although Kail and his crew Customer Services are at the virtuosic level of MCing required to be a part of the Good Life cafe scene, it was soon noticed that Kail's tracks could also be heard creeping out of the windows of the kind of cars you don't cut up as they crawled through South Central LA, the streets Kail calls home. A concept album birthed from the everyday lives and people of Los Angeles, Kail explains ""I wanted to give light to the real characters that compose the glam and grime that is Hollywood. These are the 'stars' prevalent in every corner of Tinseltown culture. The idea to incorporate the show 'Hollywood Squares' into the concept of this project just came to me in a moment of alcoholic clarity. Every album should be a concept album. Without a concept your shit is inherently lacking." Despite mutterings in the background along the lines of "this generation's Ice Cube," Kail is 100% his own man. His personality leaps from the speakers with every bar, his character rap will have the toughest listener collapse in the deepest belly-laughs, and essentially he just has that thing, that extra something, that screams "star." True Hollywood Squares' is a stone cold classic, the kind of record you play to people who don't like hip-hop just to watch them convert. This is exactly the kind of rapper who makes disciples. "All too often, hip-hop divides onto mindless gangsta braggadocio or lyrically intelligent tracks that are rather too lightweight to be pumped from cars... Yet Kail might represent the rare intersection of those two Venn diagram circles... His combination of street cred and disarming wit has already seen him compared to Nas, Ice Cube and early Jay-Z.' -The Independent UK "Now I get to put you guys up on the next big thing for a change! This dude is a cold murderer of a rapper." -I Heart Comix