There is the blind worship of an artist founded in the love of their earlier maneuvers. There is a studied relationship of an artist’s music by its audience based in a continuance of innovation and creativity. There is simple taste. Then there are fans of Kojey Radical, ourselves included, who exist within the planes of all three. Kojey has never disappointed, even when adjusting wildly in stylistic demeanor, leaving his fans attached to his prior exploits, but fluid; a student of his canon, but always ready for a curveball; perpetually drawn in by our collective ear, following like an apt lamb in the hands of a familiar, but unpredictable shepherd. And though always changing, something about his art, whether audio, visual, or literary and poetic, has never strayed from being so signature to Kojey’s essence. 

 

A new two-track release, something of a trend not just for Kojey but for all of music in the past year or more, 97: Pure, doesn’t disappoint. With a practiced understanding of the opportunity slated by an A-side / B-side cut, Radical wastes nothing in an effort to display polarizing yet additive ends of his own musicality. 

 

97 comes first. It’s a lyrical onslaught the likes of which few rappers today could match energetically, and even fewer could match given months to execute its penmanship and equilibrium. It’s nothing new for Kojey to bring the knowledge to the ears of his faithful fans, but he seemingly always finds a way to grow and expand the traits that would define him as a rapper. Straying somewhat from his spoken word roots, 97 assimilates closer to more musically-mainstream strokes. Undeniably high-energy, bordering on the hypist movement but too naturally lyrical to be downgraded to such definition, 97 exists also as an intense yet brutally honest self-exposé.

 

Pure is the latter and takes a boldly different direction. Though connected in terms of lyrical prowess and honest, telling self-conversation, Kojey runs with a more positivist and mellow style. His cadence, his thematics, and his underlying production all roll in a way meant to not only be listened to, but really be heard.

 

And thus exists the one commonality of Kojey’s deepest truths – he aim of telling something so grabbing, that no matter its final form, it becomes impossible not to at least try to understand from where it is that he speaks. And let’s all be honest, when Kojey Radical creates, all of us are here to listen, wide-eyed and open-minded.