Screenshot via YouTubeEarlier this year, we took a close look at Baltimore's exciting hip-hop scene, where artists across the spectrum are pushing creative new sounds and pushing back against preconceptions that local music begins and ends with Bmore Club. One rapper who is particularly on the pulse of things is East Baltimore's Black Zheep DZ, who's part of the BasementRap Records collective alongside Butch Dawson. Zheep's also caught the ear of notable out-of-town collaborators like D.R.A.M., GoldLink, and KeithCharles SpaceBar, the Awful Records producer behind a loose track earlier this year called "Common."Zheep and KCSB met this year at a mutual friend's apartment in Brooklyn; KCSB played Zheep some beats, Zheep chose this one and wrote the hook on the spot, and the rest is history. It was a good choice, too. "Common" sounds like a doomsday action movie, and you half-expect the whole video to fall apart because a bunch of Transformers show up and, like, blow up an oil rig. Instead, the video, directed by Media Vomit, shows Zheep roaming East Baltimore locales like the BasementRap workspace, an abandoned playground, and Nino's, a local pizza shop, in kaleidoscopic detail.Continued below…"Common" is a banger, with a hook full of catchy phrases (i.e. "what I'm hitting probly louder than my engine") and punchlines on punchlines. Zheep is funny, agile, and never too precious about his words. One of my favorite lyrics is probably one of the dumbest: "I'm hyper rowdy / howdy howdy howdy!" It's that enthusiasm that makes him so compelling. "Common" deserves to be a hit, and hopefully the video will pull it out of Soundcloud obscurity and make it one. Zheep is preparing an EP for late November, so keep him on your radar and check out "Common" below:
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