2010 Bay Area Freshmen 10 Recap: Moe Green - the latest Bay Area rap and hip-hop music

Monday, April 11, 2011

1:23PM

« 2010 Bay Area Freshmen 10 Recap: Moe Green »

With nominations for the 2011 Bay Area Freshman 10 coming to a close this past Friday, I thought now would be an appropriate time to look back at our 2010 Freshman and acknowledge the grind that they put in since being included in the inaugural list. So for the next 6 days we’ll look at one MC at a time and highlight their careers up to this point, as well as what they have done since becoming a Bay Area Freshman. Every artist’s career plan and philosophy is unique, but no matter who you are, taking advantage of legitimate buzz can never be wrong. Because in this fickle, over saturated world that we like to call hip-hop, the second you stop releasing content and doing shows, unfortunately seems to be the second many forget that you ever existed. So let’s see how the first Freshman class performed since they were named some of The Bay’s top prospects.

Moe Green:

At first glance, Bay Area rap seems like it’s solely on some hood shit. Yet those willing to dig a little deeper know that The Bay is home to a myriad of styles: from militant, to introspective, progressive, experimental, retro, nerdy, angry battle raps, horrocore, party raps, and that classic laid back cool shit. The problem is that over the past 10 to 15 years, the industry wasn’t trying to promote anyone that didn’t fit into the category of a thug, a player, a dancer, or a fashion conscious pretty boy. Luckily with the aide of the internet, those restrictions are slowly starting to break down, and artists like Moe Green are proving that it’s possible to be 100% true to yourself and your own personal experiences, and still get love on a national level.

The thing that stands out the most about Moe Green is that he seems to have no interest in pretending to be something that he’s not. This is evident when you see him driving his Toyota in a music video, his e-mail blasts from Quality Control reference the fact that he’s still working at Fed Ex, and his rhymes and album title reference professional wrestling. His music is a feel good reminder that in a genre that puts an unparalleled emphasis on keeping it “real” at all times, in actuality there are very few MC’s out there that fully embrace genuine personal expression.

While 2009’s I Just Want You To Hear My Voice, was Green’s formal introduction into the game, and is most likely what got him placed in The Bay Area Freshman 10, it wasn’t until he dropped Rocky Maivia: Non Title Match, that it became clear that not only does he know how to rap, but he is committed to the career and won’t slouch on getting his content out to the people. Leading up to the album’s free release, Moe dropped 2 commercials, and 3 music videos. Then once the whole project became available to the masses, he kept the push coming and dropped another 4 videos, one of which landing on MTV. That’s hustle, and it’s resulted in him becoming a regular face on the national blog scene as well, which in turn has earned him spots at major showcases around the country like A3C in Atlanta, and back to back trips to SXSW.

This year Moe plans on dropping the Lionheart EP, and if he promotes this project as well as he did the last one, there is no doubt that you and a bunch of old and new fans will be hearing a lot about it.

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