Indigenous in the News Featured Artist Review
N8ive Bro - Changed Man
By Jamison Mahto
I pull out of the driveway heading north on 18th Ave. S. toward Cockroach Park and the song Recognize Game starts playing on the I-pod and I try to remember that each generation has its poets.
The second trac Do You Wanna Roll With Me features a sweet and sexy female vocal and is hip-hop bordering on R n B. The lyric is sweet and cool and the added element of the female vocal makes this song something special to hear. This song is a youthful romantic look at a possible sexual encounter. The hook of the next song, We ‘Bout 2 Take A Ride feat. The Cold North Ridaz is intense, mesmerizing, and hypnotic and dancing a dance, conscious and aware yet lost to a dream world where movement and rhythm govern the magic of a new universe. I particularly enjoy this lyric as it tells the story of an invitation to take a joy ride in a stolen car, a call to loyalty to your homies despite the cost of the consequences, is by all standards a rite of passage for young native adults and is a brilliant look at contemporary native community life.
The Cold North feat. The Cold North Ridaz is a narrative poem anapestic free-verse of rhyming couplets about the nature and reality of gang life on almost any major reservation, “The Cold North! (Automatic weapons fire sound-byte in the background) It’s where we come from. . .” I reflect that the notion that the juvenile gang problem in the native community will go away if we just ignore it long enough is creating a moral vacuum and a spiritual emptiness across many of our nations.
I love the optimism of the trac titled Mytime as N8iveBro goes, “Out with the old, in with the new, I thought you knew that’s how I’m gonna do, I’m a changed man, I’m gonna change everything I can, and I can. . . Don’t leave me in the dark 'cuz it’s my time, It’s my time to shine.” I know that’s right!
The trac musikmakesdaworldgoround has a scratchy record sound byte as an intro, as N8iveBro waxes philosophical, “what you know about me? . . .representin’ for my nation, stop the player hate, git to congratulate, it’s not fake, so if you say one thing don’t do another, don’t be a hypocrite two faced busta. . . musik makes da world go ‘round. . .evolution revolution. . .it’s time for a change.” I couldn’t agree more and he quotes Ice T as he addresses the backstabbing and trash talking that has pervaded the hip-hop scene for years.
The last trac, Iwishicouldrewindtime ties this CD together with a tender sentiment about making mistakes but learning something valuable from the consequences of those mistakes. This is the work of someone that has gained some insight and maturity.
The over all production quality of SovereignRecordz is righteous, artful and clean. The CD Changed Man initiates the dialectic on some rising issues within the rural and urban reservations that our communities live on. This rising Red Lake brother has something smart and beautiful to say. This CD stands as a complete work of art as it chronicles the development into maturity of a voice for this generation as he goes from David W. Clark to N8iveBro. I listen intently to his lyrical content on Franklin Avenue headed east to the holy river and the bridge that crosses it. I’m not riding now. I’m rolling.
