Evan Dale // Feb 16, 2022 

Revolutionarily creative, Nashville’s hip-hop scene has been abounding in renaissance, defying the trends, and blazing their own trail towards a more thought-provoking, lyrically intensive chapter in both the city’s artful history, and that of rap’s greater sphere. One of Nashville’s most prophetic and prolific names is Ron Obasi who has through the course of singles, videos, EP’s, and 2020’s dynamic full-length collection, Sun Tapes, curated a particularly sharpened knack for scratching records and etching poetry through his gravelly flow. Hard-nosed, that flow is powerful. Provocative and insightful, his words are piercing. Jazzy and mellow, his beats bring balance to a radically enlightened sound that, like other movements, transcends time. And with newest A-Side / B-Side offering, Freethinkers, both the range of his sound and the fixated thought-process behind it exhibit an artist who’s out not just to make his mark, but to make a statement.

Riddled with references to King and Ali, overtop a mellow series of hypnotizing chords and a hard-hitting bassline, the first track, Activist, puts on a clinic of Obasi’s ability to seamlessly stitch his unique sound and ubiquitous cadence into something at the core of hip-hop: social discourse. Unapologetically waterfalling his heightened penmanship with unexpected wordplay and substantiated declaration, the Freethinkers opener bleeds of both its title and its album artwork, where nothing but a sociocultural thesis through the Black lens – not even Obasi’s one-of-a-kind sound nor his rare ability to infuse something so uncompromising with a touch of humor – takes center stage.

And then comes GodLaw. The Freethinkers secondary song, again, is an exploration of musical balance. After all, instilling an A-Side / B-Side release with balance isn’t only an incredibly valuable way for artists to display their range, but a requirement for the two-track model to shine its brightest. And though replacing the chords with the keys, the thundering bass with a more organic drumkit, and the anthemically paced with a freer flowing and more fluid cadence, Obasi adheres strongly to the social discourse at the heart of Freethinkers’ id. With it, he maneuvers through GodLaw as a storyteller, recounting a past that led him into position as a freethinking leader atop one of modern culture’s most intriguing hotbeds.

It was a gangster who told me to stay in school.

It was a killer who told me to love myself and follow my rules.

The candy lady said I could be anything that I put my mind to.

Together, Activist and GodLaw amalgamate to make Freethinkers a musically wide-ranging and ideologically focused exhibition of just who it is that Ron Obasi is as an artist, as a man, and in the gray area between that can’t be separated from either: an uncompomsingly unique sound, an unapologetically provocative leader, and at the end of the day, a damn good rapper. And coming by way of his all-encompassing and still emerging creative collective, $upreme Radicalz, Freethinkers also feels anthemic of just where it is that he’s taking his larger vision, so be on the lookout for more.