On a classic Exile beat: perfect use of a sample, complex, but simple enough to give Blu a free canvas to paint his picture, Blu takes 99% of rappers out there to school. Consistently making top notch jams, Blu and his musical muse Exile have been a beautiful combination for years now, the rap ying and ying interlocking seamlessly. This song borders the line between hip hop and poetry, as the best ones do. If you break this song into two levels-with and without the beat-you start to unravel the DNA of the best hip hop-the forever interwining nature of the beat and the lyrics.
Telling a story about being a young, dumb, kid, and eventually killing a man, the song is also the story of how Blu found hip-hop. The soulful beat and Blu's effotless flow at first mask the dark story at the heart of the song, but after repeated listens the story itself becomes the proverbial diamond in the rough. Above all, this song is a study in hip hop poetics, about bringing the defining characterisitcs of poetry and applying them to rap. Blu's structure repetition throughout is pure Hip Hop 101. Repeating the "dumb kid with a gun" line over and over until the last few lines of the track where he completely flips it and says "Dumb kid with a tongue, that I got from Hip Hop," Blu has transformed that previous one line narrator into something finally positive, ending his, up to that point, bleak history with a bright brushstroke. Forever bridging the literary and the vocal, this is a prime example of a rap workout brought to you by Blu.
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Blu & Exile Cold Hearted f. Miguel
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