A-Game

Two hours in and A-Game's already recorded four songs. As long as he keeps this tempo for the next nine hours, he'll finish the mixtape by the end of the night, and Hottest in tha City 2 will be ready for its release party on July 30. He's hustling because he could only scrap together enough funds for these ten hours of studio time. So he's back in the booth, headphones over his navy blue Cardinals fitted, which seems to never leave his head.

"I'm the rookie of the year, don't call me Blake Griffin please/But I'm on the road, blowing up — TNT/And ballin' hard in yo' arena my show should be on TNT, BET, MTV/ gon' have to play the kid eventually..."

And there's that mesmerizing flow, smooth and confident, rolling over the beat with Southern twang and West Coast chill. That's the flow that gained a following when he opened for J. Cole in April. The flow that turned heads at S.L.U.M. Fest in June. The flow that made listeners start wondering whether this skinny kid with the prom-king charisma and grade-school grin could become a new face of St. Louis hip-hop.

A-Game has reached that stage of his career just before the tipping point. He released his first two mixtapes in the past twelve months, emerging as one of the most talented rappers in St. Louis. But he's still an unsigned unknown, who can barely afford a few hours of studio time.

But in those few hours... damn. He nails his verse in a couple of takes, exits the booth and listens to the finished product. As "Rookie of the Year" plays, he nods his head, bounces on his toes then pumps his fists. This is the lead track for the mixtape, and it's a splash of ice water to the ears — three-plus minutes of syrupy winding flows that linger on some syllables and jump into double-time on others, weaving unpredictably among rhyme tempos, before climaxing with drum-roll-staccato speed. It's an impressive display of aural diversity. And it's a long way from where he was a year ago: a Westminster College junior named Anthoney Ellis who couldn't draw more than a dozen people to his first mixtape release party.

A year before that, he'd grown disillusioned with school and dropped out after his freshman year. So in the fall of 2009 he worked graveyard shifts at Target, stocking shelves in the night and writing verses in the day. He'd been rapping since he was eleven but hadn't taken it seriously before. But without school, what else did he have? So he sharpened his writing and polished his rhymes until the sun set and he had to get ready for work. Then his car broke down. Then he lost his job.

"That period of time sucked shit," he says. "I felt like I had just hit rock bottom."

And now here he is in the booth, recording the lines that — who knows? — might take him to the top. On the other side of the soundproof glass, the studio is packed with people, the familiar faces of the Frat, which is what his crew is called. There's Sterling and Korey and Kelvin and Tres and Ross and John.

"Have you done 'Tha Munchie Song' yet?" asks Korey.

"Nah, not yet," says A-Game, from the booth.

"Cool, cool," says Korey, with a wide grin.

"Tha Munchie Song" illustrates A-Game's creativity as an artist. Over a beat sampled from the theme song of The Office, he spits lines about what happens after you smoke weed. One of the mixtape's strengths is that song topics are narrowed into details and focused ideas.

On "Black Man's Plight," A-Game starts off musing on racism then veers into black self-empowerment as a solution to urban blight, rapping, "Got the nerve to call a muthafucka racist/As if blacks ain't killin' all the black people in the nation." Instead of hooks, A-Game dots his two verses with speeches from Tupac and Cornell West. He further displays his capacity and willingness to delve into social consciousness on "I Did It for My City," where he says, "What you know about the St. Louis blues?/Looking at the news, family all crying 'cause he ain't make 22/Shot with a .22 by a twenty-year-old/And police can't give no reason for his head to be blown."

He balances intellectualism with radio-ready wit and swag, molding disciplined writing into commercially viable tunes. For instance, on "A Year Later," A-Game reflects upon how he's proving wrong all those who doubted him: "Is it cool to have an ego?/Or if I come out confident will you treat me like T.O./Or do me like LeBron when I decide to leave home/'cause it's the only way I know to get the ring we all want."

Beyond lyrical versatility, A-Game displays vocal versatility throughout the mixtape. On "Honestly Speaking" and "Damn Homie," he changes pace mid-verse and intermittently links bars together with long-winded flows. On "G Shit," which might be the illest track on the tape, A-Game rides a sinister drum-string-synth beat with slow and forceful lines. - Albert Samaha

“Play That Sh*t With the Window Down”, the chorus echoes as A-Game blessed the mic with a summer anthem to ride to when the nights are warm and the women are out. “Sunday on the North” definitely brings some Midwest flavor to a track you could see yourself riding to somewhere close to South Beach or the beaches of California. - Curtis Jackson

St. Louis rapper A-Game is off to a big 2016. Listen to his new record “I Can’t Tell” - The Daily Loud

ST. Louis rapper A-Game is back with a new wavy music video for his track “Higher Living” – Check out this new visual above and be sure to follow A-Game on SoundCloud if you dig the music. - The Daily Loud