Aside from the never-ending Lil Wayne downloads and minute-by-minute beef updates, the best thing about hip-hop blogs is reading the kind of scathing takedowns that can come only from the most dedicated fans. Bill O’Reilly’s got nothing on the cranks at Oh Word, whose jokey forgery of a Cam’ron notebook–complete with a seventh grade-stoner-style drawing of his dream car, the “Camborghini”–was gleefully reposted by pretty much every hip-hop site on the Internet. The blog’s standards are painfully high, and its reviews regularly set new benchmarks for hilarious cruelty. Maybe one in 20 is positive, and even then the praise is usually qualified. So last month, when it posted a gushing review of a new album from a Chicago MC I’d never heard of that quoted an entire verse and referred to him as the “real deal,” I clicked the link to download the music. Best decision I made all week.
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Bless’s contest entry was his first cut to see any kind of release anywhere–Oh Word made it available for download. One reviewer called it “beautiful rapping,” and I can’t disagree. His writing even holds up on the page: “Some wonder why it’s hard to see the stars at night / But it’s easy to see former hoop stars kissing the pipe / Former lives they snatched quarters off backboards / Now they’re reduced to begging for quarters in front of stores.”
“Initially, it was Bless 1’s lyrics that caught my attention,” says Oh Word contributor Fresh. I e-mailed him asking for a comment or two about Bless, and he hit me back with six paragraphs. “The way he filled his rhymes with all of these little details about Chicago made me feel like I really knew the city, despite the fact that I’m a kid from Jersey who’s never made it outside of O’Hare.” This really is one of the best things about Bless’s lyrics: “It seems like only yesterday I was riding bikes / Popping wheelies, lips sticky from Italian ice,” he raps in “Never Give Up.” “Ghetto child in the city where the wind’s strong / And men roam with their alligator skins on.”
During that year he’s made a fan out of at least one well-placed person in the Chicago hip-hop business, but it hasn’t gotten him any exposure. He went to the WGCI studios during an open demo-listening session, hoping to get his stuff on the air, and played a few tracks for a music staffer. “The girl’s bopping her head,” he says, “and she says, ‘Man, this really sounds good.’ And I’m getting my hopes up. But she’s like, ‘You sound like Common. So why should I play your album when we’re already playing Common?’ They have no problem playing songs that sound like each other all day long, but I guess they have a limit on the so-called conscious rap.”
