MC Till

Tuesday, 16 May 2006

k-Drama & MC Till - Black Guy Meets White Man
(Indie)

What do you get when a black guy & a white man meet up? No, you don’t get Phonetic Composition; you get k-Drama & MC Till, two very dope up & coming emcees. These two emcees have joined up to give us a memorable project in Black Guy Meets White Man.

To say the least, this is a very upbeat & jazzy album that was made for people who love feel good music. That’s exactly what this album is: feel good music. The album quickly jumps off with the track “Oduyoye” featuring K’s girlfriend Charde Campbell. After asking Regis what this track meant & telling me that it meant nothing, I immediately got the impression that they were simply trying to have fun with this project, which is more than evident in this track. Another track that proves that this is all about fun is the aptly titled song “Feel Good Music.” It’s on this song that MC Till has a stuttering problem, and the music on the song is so good that it temporarily cures his stuttering problem for as long as the music is playing. What I love about the hook is that MC Till basically runs down a list of all the places where he’s rocked a show.

As you journey through this album, you find that it’s really about taking it to the good old days of hip-hop. One song that embodies this is the track “Back to the MC,” where the two reference many of the old school emcees, but then go on to say that Jesus Christ is the best emcee. This one has a very old school feel to it, and MC Till did a good job with the production on this track. Along the same lines is the track “Get High Music.” It’s on this song that the black guy & white man determine to move the crowd with their music as an alternative to getting high with drugs. Then they just give love to hip-hop with “Hip-Hop,” expressing how they came to put the music & genre into perspective after coming to Christ.

The two emcees also get serious on this album. The first song is “To Be or Not To Be” featuring fellow T.H.I.S. Click Records member Bracey. Here, MC Till & k-Drama talk about the loves in their lives and express the sincerity of their love. But one of the songs that speaks so much truth is the song “I Wanna Spend the Night.” This is a song by MC Till where he tells the story from his college days; he was in the dorm alone with a girl one evening & she wanted to sleep with him. The song goes on to give the details of how he escaped from that heated situation.

Overall, I really love the vibe of this project. MC Till & k-Drama did a great job bringing together their talents and producing a quality project. I admire the two for taking it back to the days of feel good music and just having fun on the mic, as that is the one thing that shines through above anything else. Their lyricism was crisp and the production was top notch. If you love feel good music, then this is the album for you. After my first listen, I was hooked! - www.sphereofhiphop.com

Since he began releasing music in the mid-’00s, Cincinnati Hip Hop artist MC Till’s work has been marked by honesty, positivity, collaboration and ambition. Till’s early releases included an upbeat collaborative album with national “Holy Hip Hop” fave K-Drama; the darker (yet still hopeful) and introspective Beautiful Raw solo LP, on which he questions and examines wavering faith; and Kings Of Tragedy, which he and collaborator Wonder Brown took on the road, accompanied by a dramatic stage production based on the album. 

Till didn’t just cobble together a group of college students studying Jazz and piece together the new release on a laptop in his bedroom. The MC went all out for The Neighborhood, first signing Ric Hordinski (former Over the Rhine guitarist and Grammy nominated for his production work) on as producer. Hordinski (who also provides guitar on the project) gathered together some of the area’s most accomplished Jazz artists to record the album at his Monastery studio/performance space. Blue Wisp Big Band anchor (and drummer for artists like Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, among others) John Von Ohlen provides the drumming, while the acclaimed Steve Schmidt (a Blue Wisp Big Band co-founder who has played with Eddie Harris, Joe Lovano, Joe Henderson and scores of other heavyweights) plays piano. Busy Nashville session player Byron House, who has worked with Emmylou Harris, Nickel Creek, Dixie Chicks and scores of others, provides the bass.

That’s a collection of artists that would intimidate most, but Till totally holds his own on The Neighborhood, guiding the proceedings like a boss with his deft flow and lyrical prowess. The musicians create a warm, organic soundscape for each track (written by Hordinski and House) that is straight up vintage Jazz, with a few moments of sweet funkiness. Together with singer Aprina Johnson, who provides some great jazzy hooks throughout the album, they create a unique listening experience that has a musical depth most Hip Hop recordings don’t come close to capturing.

Till does a great job of adapting to the unique musical surroundings, providing vocal deliveries that lay back and feed into the jazzy flow. On songs like “Quiet Killer” and “Right Now,” Till delivers the lyrics in a poetic, spoken-word style, while vocals on tracks like the title cut could more easily be pulled out of this context and placed into a more standard Hip Hop situation.  

Till’s lyrics on The Neighborhood are also some of the best of his career. He again looks realistically at life’s struggles and offers optimism — on “Quiet Killer,” he personifies cancer (during the run up to the album, Till’s wife battled the disease, which provided a lot of source material for the songs on the album), while on “Right Now” he acknowledges his shortcomings in life, but knows he must live in the now and not dwell on the past: “And yet the beauty in my life flows/’Cause the future of my life knows/The past in me is not life now/And that’s beautiful and beautiful is right now.” The album is loaded with that kind of unflappable hopefulness in the face of adversity, but it’s never overly sunshine-y and always tempered with a strong dose of realism. 

Other highlights include “You Are,” with its sharp vocal hook, which the band riffs off of expertly (as one might expect); the groove-driven “Beautiful Stress;” and the poetry-slam-ready “Street Light,” which slow-struts beneath Till’s unique rhyme schemes, which he plays with like a Jazz musician plays with scales.

Artists from Guru and Digable Planets up through Cincinnati’s own IsWhat?! have shown that Jazz and Hip Hop aren’t the strange bedfellows one might think, and The Neighborhood is further irrefutable testimony that, when done right, the two styles are completely complementary. It’s a wonder why more artists don’t explore that fertile intersection. 

The Neighborhood is available in both digital and physical (CD) formats. Visit mctill.bandcamp.com to order the disc or download the seven-track release.

By Mike Breen - City Beat

With Braille’s Cloud Nineteen getting in the spotlight a couple of albums have kind of gone under the radar…The Kings of Tragedy are one such group. The Kings of Tragedy are a new group, but the group is made of two household names in the Christian Hip Hop world. MC Till and Wonder Brown are the tag team that make up the Kings of Tragedy. Some should remember MC Till from his other tag team project that he did with K-Drama, some should know Wonder Brown from his Scribbling Idiots crew. The two come together to make a rather unique album.

The best thing that makes this album special is the fact that when MC Till and Wonder Brown got together to do this album they made sure they had fun doing it and it shows numerous times during the album. From the first track on the album “Bless Your Soul” you know you’re about to go on a ride you’ll never forget.

Two tracks later I noticed something the third track isn’t a song IT’S A SKIT! The first skit “Famous Musicians” is a pretty funny track, so I skipped most of the songs to find more skits and there ended being about five skits. The skits actually put a satirical view on Hip Hop which found interesting and very entertaining I honestly listened to last skit “Infomercial Superstars” about 10-20 times in row it’s that funny.

Back to the music, as you progress through the album the tracks “Fun Factor” continues to rise. The epitome of this is “Cincinnati Summer” is one of the best examples of a banger that you play in the car (with the stereo bumped to 20) on a nice summer day. The production behind this beat is my favorite on the album and has that summer time feel to it. MC Till and Wonder Brown both rhyme on the environment they live in that we know as Cincinnati, Ohio. Wonder Brown also ventures into an area that I’ve never heard him in before…he’s singing. And it’s not amazing, but it’s better than I thought it would be and it actually goes well with the music.

After a skit about not having skits in an album (see what they did there HA!) the album moves on to “Puzzling Thing” where Wonder Brown again showcases his mad singing skills. Another plus to this album (this song included) is the Vintage feel that is seen through numerous songs on the album, “Morning Love” (feat. Cas Metah), “The Road” and a track that is really starting to grow on me “Wonderfully Delicious”.

“Wonderfully Delicious” features K-Drama and Chandre who handle the chorus of the song (the chorus is so addictive I find myself singing along with it and replaying the chorus about 20 times, NO JOKE!!). The track is your vintage love song and it’s one you’ll be rotating for a long time (it might also give you the urge to go and other vintage love songs in your collection.

The Kings of Tragedy do something that I haven’t heard in a while, they made a fun album, just by listening to the album you can tell the duo had fun making it. The vintage production with seemingly satirical skits about hip hop that are funny makes this album a definite listen. The one knock I have against the album is that the lyrics aren’t very thought-provoking but what they lack in that department they make up for in just overall fun having a good time. Get this album and lets pray we see a sophomore album by these two very soon

By Michael Stover - www.bigsto.wordpress.com

Following up A Beautiful Raw, (MC) Till’s latest release is A Beautiful Break: a combination of his continued examination of the Western Church and a self-exploration that works to eliminate his personal struggle with self-condemning thoughts. With numerous solo projects under his belt, along with various collaboration albums, including Kings of Tragedy with Wonder Brown and Black Guy Meets White Man with now CMR Recording Artist k-Drama, it comes as sort of a surprise that Till would still have such a struggle with his self-confidence. The man has been bringing it since the late 90’s and is still relevant in the underground Christian Rap arena, so the self-doubt doesn’t really seem to fit the picture. With A Beautiful Break, Till provides a look into these past doubts and how he has successfully defeated them as he moves forward with his ministry.

A self-proclaimed backpack rapper, MC (Till) does a solid job keeping this album moving with a bouncy collection of instrumentals that allows the project to move along smoothly with the spoken transitional interludes that link the project together. As an album that sticks to the script of one focused idea, it’s important that it transitions in a way that doesn’t generate listener fatigue, and Till does a good job of avoiding this pitfall. He starts the album with his journey from self-doubt to freedom from self-condemning thoughts, using spoken streams-of-consciousness to convey his own struggles and convictions in a way that is thorough enough to understand yet also brief enough to keep the listener interested. Upon ending his journey with this freedom at “Freedom Song”, he transitions to his analysis of the Western Church, which is also carried along by solid backpacker production and spoken interludes to explain his motives. Essentially, MC (Till) took a concept that had a lot of potential to flop as an album and turned it into a solid project that conveys his personal convictions very clearly.

As mentioned earlier, MC (Till)’s well-practiced backpacker boom bap rings true throughout the project, enabling his confrontation of self-doubt and examination of the Western Church to mesh into one well-organized concept. Had this album been tackled by an unpracticed emcee, the finished product would’ve most certainly lacked the level of professional quality that MC (Till) brought to the table. From solid beats to the clean flow that he pours over them, Till’s final product is very well put together and meant to be absorbed as one piece, not as a collection of individual tracks.

Despite the album’s neat overall fit-and-finish, there are still a few pitfalls that A Beautiful Break couldn’t seem to avoid. Although the spoken transitions and interludes added a level of sincerity to the album that helped to clarify Till’s motives on the project, they couldn’t help but come across as a little (struggling to find the word) corny? Also, as many albums that flow as one concurrent project, A Beautiful Break lacks any standout hits that would bring the album a large amount of publicity among fans of the genre. However, as Till believes on the album, focusing on the negatives is counterproductive, which makes this portion of the review seem a little superfluous.

From self-doubt to a freeing self-confidence, MC (Till)’s A Beautiful Break is a very relatable album that not only chronicles the escape from self-condemning thoughts, but also analyzes the importance of having a solid relationship with Christ outside of the physical structure of a Church. Although many may misinterpret Till’s message on the utility of the Church, listening carefully to the words of “the bridge” will help the listener understand where he is coming from. If not a collection of new hits, A Beautiful Break is still an interesting listen worth lending an ear to.

By Garrett Richie - Sphere of Hip-hop

Adam Hayden, also known as MC Till, figures out how to engage others in his music and his point of view. And in Cincinnati, where more MCs line the city's blocks than churches and liquor stores, that's not an easy feat.

It's August's Scribble Jam Festival, and the parking lot of Annie's Entertainment Complex is crawling with MCs slinging CDs and flyers. Amid this, MC Till walks up, hands over his CD, Beautiful Raw, and holds a conversation. Some other guy announces, "He's from out of town," butts in with a hard sell for his CD by freestyling -- ad nauseam -- to the point that a huddle of people finally tell him, "Sorry, I don´t have any money" like he's a panhandler.

"I think we're in a place and time where people know what good rappers sound like, so that's not a novelty anymore," Till explains. In the beginning, his question was, "How do I stand out?"

Being interactive became Till's way. He books quirky little "home tours," playing in people's living rooms -- flyers advertising may say, "Show at Cathy's House." Or, he'll write beautifulraw/Podcast.com blogs to brief people about the CD:

"Beautiful Raw is the passion for (and against) something or someone, like a previous girlfriend," Till writes. "It is how I looked into her eyes and saw beauty then heard her talk down to me and (I) felt ugly."

The West Chester rapper credits a guy named Ralo from Indianapolis, who puts on free shows by raising money through churches and generous benefactors, for giving him the idea to write blogs.

Till recalls, "I was just talking to him like, 'How do I get my music out to the people a little bit more?' And he said, 'Write emails. When you write emails to people or blogs, don't just promote yourself because people can care less. They don't know you, they don't know about your new album, just be personal with them, just tell 'em about what's going on in your life, how the music's going.' And so I do that, and it works. When you're authentic with people, I think they appreciate it."

"In June, I sent out emails about relationships," he says. "In July, it was about Hip Hop. In August we kind of fused Hip Hop in with the Church."

On the album, Till questions incongruities he finds in the institution of church, Hip Hop and in women. Together, these entities form sort of a triptych he places on a pedestal one moment, and is ready to tear down the next. On the cover, cutouts of Till, a boom box and an estranged woman pulling him in the direction of a church inspire questions: Is he using Hip Hop to endorse the Church? Or is he dissing the Church?

"The concept is that I'm frustrated with the Church, I'm dealing with hypocrisy, I'm dealing with things that are ungodly that are going on within the Church and I'm saying, 'Enough, I'm tired, I'm sick of this, and I'm trying to leave, but there's something that's still pulling me back in," Till says.

"And so with the boom box there, I'm trying to get to some fun, light, innocent stuff, and here's this girl pulling me back to this church. That's kind of the concept of the artwork, and pretty much the album as well."

Prior to Beautiful Raw, Till recorded Black Guy Meets White Man with EMI Holy Hip Hop artist, K-Drama, and on it the two mesh well over lighthearted Disco breakbeats.

"I'm a very optimistic person and I see beautiful things going on, even in the midst of all my frustrations with church, I see such beautiful people involved," he says.

Some of his biggest endorsers include Reverend Freddie T. Piphus of Zion Global Ministries in West Chester, who calls Till a "Christian Hip Hop artist" who "lives what he professes." But Till says being a poster child for Christian Hip Hop would mean being "very evangelical," "converting people and reaching the lost," which isn't his aim.

"I think that what this album does, it allows for discussion. It allows for a place where we say, 'Okay, we know what we've been taught, we know what we've learned growing up, now let's discuss it."

BY MILDRED C. FALLEN - City Beat