Friday Flow: "In Session" by Class
posted in: Features • Urban
Every Friday on the OurStage blog, I’ll be featuring a great example of flow and lyricism in hip hop songs pulled from the OurStage ranks. I’ll get the artist’s thoughts on the song, as well as post the lyrics or best verse so fans can follow the flow themselves.
Worcester’s own Class may have relocated to the Florida heat but his rhymes remain just as cold. “In Session” is an extra raw cut from Class’ debut mixtape that speaks to all the things that Class has a problem with in the mixed up world of hip hop.
Class is coming to teach
In Session, the title track off the debut mixtape set to finish later this month, is meant to be my official introduction to hip hop. The goal was to be as lyrical possible and get at the hardcore hip hop heads without losing everyone else. I want In Session to hit people the way Canibus did when he first hit the scene and two minutes into a track you couldn’t deny his skill as a lyricist. On the flip side, the track had to be authentic. I didn’t want to write a hot line just for the sake of a hot line. Verse had to be real. Lines like “Future up in smoke, spit hits through the ash/ World cut me at my knee’s, wrote lyrics on my ass” speak on blowing past obstacles. There’s a lot of ups and downs that come with pursuing music, even at the early stages, but that’s what pushes me forward.
I also wanted to speak on rappers that stress that “overly thug-ed out” image that obviously contradicts what we know to be the real. Hip hop music is so saturated with that right now that I didn’t aim at any one specific, just in general:
“Here he say’s he’s rich, there he says he steals/ Picture showing dimples, but his album said he kills?”
There’s a lot of that going on in hip hop these days, and it’s frustrating. Hearing millionaires rap on how “real they keep it in the streets” while they film the next episode of Cribs. Be real…
“How you living in the struggle from a house upon a hill?”
On the same token, people know what’s real. Hip hop is starting to recognize the difference between image and artist and if the two are too far on opposite ends, we turn away.
“But then again, without you ” I couldn’t come as the contrast”
And that’s where I hope to fit in. We need new artists to turn to for authenticity, for something different. “In Session” is telling hip hop… “Turn to me, I’m the difference”
“Never off track, on tracks, on task/ This ends the lesson, I dismiss the class...”