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Brooklyn rapper Fore’s “What I Need” is, essentially, a rap song about a girl—one with an excellent beat and a solid display of rapping, but a rap song about a girl nonetheless. As Fore puts it, “What I Need” is “about the sometimes compulsive nature of partying; when you’re not just going out to have fun, but because it’s a part of who you’ve become.”

Few rap songs about girls or the compulsive nature of partying that I know of come with bizarre, data-moshed websites like FORE’s http://whvt.in/eed/

The experience of watching certain words turn the dog background image into MMA fighters, familiar memes, and general psychedelia gives “What I Need” an added layer of meaning—perhaps the sort so important to a song’s character that its memory becomes engrained in each listen that takes place away from the “proper” listening experience of watching a dog morph into Charles Ramsey. - Pigeons and Planes

Brooklyn-based rapper Fore’s new single, “Hometown” is much more than the sum of its parts: haunting piano, lonely bass and an emotive voice to guide it. “Hometown” is what happens when you spend your youth living between four continents. It’s what happens when your interests range from the Scotland’s Cocteau Twins, New York’s Nas and Mali’s Amadou & Miriam. After spanning the globe and the musical spectrum, Fore’s musical influences would seem dizzying if it weren’t for the provocative sense of loneliness central to his music and particularly “Hometown.”What do you think?

“Hometown” rises and falls with swelling horns and distant synths as Fore evocatively describes the struggles of being an immigrant in New York. From experience, Fore warns that while your home praises you as a “hero” for coming to America, New York will disregard you as another foreign face in a city full of them– A cab driver with a PhD is just a cab driver / A dishwasher’s with JD a JD is just a dishwasher.What do you think?

As Fore’s new album, The Stranger, approaches release, he has positioned himself as a valuable voice in the hip-hop community. But an important distinction needs to be made: Fore isn’t first and foremost an immigrant rapper. Fore is first and foremost an honest rapper. The song’s despondent hook– I’m a man, little did they know / A man without a country, little did they know– is met with his vivid description of an expired visa prompting NYPD to violently and unjustly detain him– Neglected to mention my visa suspension / I was sitting alone in detention. As the audience listens to a single austere beat carry away Fore’s pantheon of live horns, the rapper is left to wonder if he’ll ever be free, let alone free enough to reclaim the life he once had. Strem “Hometown” below and hit the link to hear more of Fore’s sound via Okayafrica. What do you think? - Okayplayer.com

Alienation, xenophobia and pain are the prime themes of Zimbabwean born, Brooklyn based rapper Fore’s new track, ‘Hometown’, from his upcoming LP, The Stranger. Fore’s personal history, including rough times in New York City echo around the track, as he describes himself as a “man without a country”. Emotion based rapping, especially the kind that utilises personal experiences are always interesting to listen to, and this is no exception.

Not just any rapper can take on the isolation from not having a home or facing racism, so the themes on ‘Hometown’ instantly make it one of the most vastly different and interesting tracks that’s surfaced so far this year, at least in hip-hop. A hot button issue like immigration or the treatment of foreigners in a foreign land is always going to provoke a mixed reaction, but when Fore raps, “Neglected to mention my visa suspension, now I sit alone in detention”, you really get a sense that’s a reality in his life; that the world is always going to treat him differently than most people.

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He’s the minority and he’s channeling his emotion through his music, which is yes, sad, but at the same time empowering that he can let out his anger through this medium. Content aside, this Vulture has not even touched on the production, courtesy of Fore himself and Kev Birk. It’s dark, glitchy, atmospheric and as emotional as the lyrics, which is a massive plus because the two work in harmony to really provide the track with even more heart-felt sentiment.

The outro to the track is especially evocative, perfect light night music to vibe out to, so an instrumental of ‘Hometown’ should also be on everyone’s radar at some stage too. With rappers like Leif, Kitty Pryde and Fore, because they’re so different and far removed from people’s concepts of a rapper (there’s a lot of people who can’t break from the strictly Eminem/Drake mega stars area), they’re obviously not for everyone’s tastes.

But, individualism in music is a beautiful thing, and if you’re looking for a unique voice in the rap game, give Fore and ‘Hometown’ a try, at least for a different perspective or for a tale of a man’s personal struggle with being an outsider in a modern world that’s largely indifferent or against them. Powerful stuff. - Vulture Magazine

There are quite a few people who will complain that contemporary hip-hop is dead; however, what many of those people shamefully have missed is that hip-hop has quietly gone through a revolution similar to the late 80s and early 90s in which artists are experimenting with the boundaries of what hip-hop should sound like, what it should look like, and what it should talk about thematically. Of course, you still have the street shit but you also have a number of artists talking about things that artists hadn’t talked about much in the 80s. In the case of Brooklyn-based emcee and producer Fore, he’s spent time on four different continents before he turned 18. and as a result he was naturally exposed to a variety of cultures, experiences and sounds; in fact, he’s claimed the Cocteau Twins, Big L, Big Pun, Nas, and Armadou and Miriam as influences on his sound. But thematically, as you’ll hear off “Hometown,” the first single off his forthcoming full-length, The Stranger his lyrics concern themselves with the immigrant experience, questions of identity when you’re a stranger in a foreign land, and of self-doubt among others, with an emotional honesty and a complex rhyme scheme.

Sonically, the song employs the use of an ambient soundscape consisting of swirling electronics, and a mournful piano and horn sample that reminds me quite a bit of Steven A. Clark’s Fornication Under Consent of the King. - Joy of Violent Movement