Chris DeLine

Recently releasing The Very Ink… EP with producer JOTA ESE, Nashville’s Truth Clipsy is back with another determined offering in the form of his new track “Live Forever.” Lyrically, the song takes aim at modern rap standards, following an aging character’s development of self awareness as he makes the transition from “thinking that he will live forever to understanding that the only things that will live forever are the ideas that you pass on to the world.”

The story is set to a throwback beat provided by Bill Breeze under his Johnny MO and the Crazy 88 alias (Breeze himself just dropped a funky new collaboration with PM titled “Can’t Stop“) and when combined with Clipsy’s focused lyrical aim the song takes on a form all its own. “The partying and bottle popping, the violence and drugs, and the subjection of women are the most cliché,” explains Clipsy. “But yet the most popular subjects to rap about.” It’s sort of funny, thinking back to a time when “socially conscious” was a term that garnered respect in the rap community. It has since been diluted by a decade’s worth of watered down philosophies and now carries with it something of an undesirable association — Clipsy addresses this with the track.

“We don’t talk about the responsibilities of friends to look take care of the children that our friends leave behind. We don’t talk about making our communities better and offering hope to the younger generation. We don’t talk about why we really want to have a ton of hate and animosity whenever we are successful. We don’t talk about AIDS or the dangers of having sex with many partners. Why are these not viable subjects in the hip-hop community?” Why indeed.

[This article first appeared on Break on a Cloud.]