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The next performer was Brooklyn (by way of Ghana) rapper, Blitz the Ambassador, the real reason I even attempted to stand in the rain for a free concert. I refused to preview any of his music after being told how dope he was and that he performed with a live band. I figured sight unseen, if he was really that good, he’d have me at ‘One, two, one, two.’ Sure enough, I left that set open. Blitz embodies everything to love about hip-hop that the media never talks about: thoughtful prose, unbridled energy, complete mastery of a crowd and a sense of boyish glee that he really couldn’t be happier doing anything else. He even got in on the solar-powered fun when he took a minute to shout out the now hidden sun. I don’t think any rapper could have sounded so convincingly un-corny thanking Mother Nature (except maybe Ghostface), but Blitz had me believing he could do anything. There were signs of a heavy Black Thought influence from a couple “Web”-like verses over sparse beats, his repeated acknowledgements of his band (“You are now rockin’ with the Almighty Embassy Ensemble”) and a little singing thrown in for good measure. His horn section added to the orchestral, cosmic vibe under the muggy night sky as Blitz closed his set with “Remembering the Future”: “I am who I am/you can never change me/Reaching for the sun/Remembering the future.” - Okayplayer.com
Discography
Soul Rebel (2004)
Double Consciousness (2006)
Suicide Stereotype (Coming Soon)
Hands of Time (single) playing currently on NYC's Power 105.1 (Future Flavas)
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Bio
BIO
It’s going to take more than verbal missiles for Hip-Hop to stay in power. Now more than ever, we need diplomats to forge lasting creative alliances, finesse fence-sitters and bridge the gap between warring factions.
Blitz the Ambassador has been ready for that job. And Suicide Stereotype, the underground king’s politically-charged, genre-bending third album, proves it.
“I went for broke with this album,” says the Ghana-born MC and producer who counts Fela Kuti, Bjork, Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Rakim among his influences. “I set out to change the way hip-hop approaches live instrumentation, to create synergy between all of the sounds on my personal playlist.”
To get the job done, Blitz and longtime co-producer Optiks enlisted a diverse cast of musicians including Chicago’s Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, emerging soul singer Rob Murat and indie rock sensation Kate Mattison
Lest the hip-hop get lost in the musical mash-up, there’s Blitz’s bombastic flow and stadium-size stage presence. In the tradition of KRS-One and Chuck D, Blitz can move any crowd, small or large. He’s hijacked the hearts of Soulja Boy-loving teenyboppers in tiny Clemson, South Carolina. He’s swayed a grown and flossy Philly crowd who paid their money to watch Freeway and Akon but couldn’t help but shake their asses to Blitz’s cascade of sound.
….”Red, Gold, Green, Black Star authentic”
Growing up in Accra City where electricity and running water weren’t promised, Blitz found solace in creativity, drawing award-winning pictures, playing the djembe drum, and soaking up the urgent horns and multilayered percussion of the local High Life music. In the early ‘90s when his older brother brought home Public Enemy’s ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’, Blitz found his calling.
“These guys felt the way I felt and they could speak honestly about it,” the Brooklyn transplant explains. “At that time, Ghana was just recovering form a brutal military government— try to make a political statement and you’d be gone. Hip-hop allowed me to hear people who looked like me speaking out.”
By blending the slang of his community with the cadences of American rappers, Blitz went on to win local MC battles, make radio appearances, and play venues and festivals from Arusha Tanzania, to Berlin, Germany. Even as a marketing major at Ohio’s Kent State University, he stayed focused on hip-hop, co-producing, distributing and directing videos for his first two efforts, ‘Soul Rebel’ and Double Consciousness. And of course he opened for any artist who came to town, including Talib Kweli, The Roots and De La Soul.
Now, more than a decade into the hip-hop game, Blitz still brings the undiluted passion of a new artist. Even the provocative cover of Suicide Stereotype—a man with a boom-box for a head blows out his brains—symbolizes of his love for the culture. “Hip-hop music is our lifeline,” the MC says of the image he designed as a response to the fuselage of ringtone-y singles and studio gangersterism on the market. “We can’t buy into stereotypes of young Black men and stay involved in our music’s destruction and think we’re going to survive ourselves.”
With Suicide Stereotype, we can all rest assured that Blitz the Ambassador is doing his part to help repair what’s wrong in Hip-Hop—and to celebrate what’s so very right.
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