Unless you subscribe to complete, wholesome positivity or are simply an utter neg of a human being, you likely experience both aforementioned matters of opinion from time to time. After all, in this day and age it seems that one person’s talentless fuck is another person’s talented creator. No matter your opinions or your preferences, it’s undeniable that the jubilant moment of stumbling upon your new favorite artist with the random click of a mouse is far more intoxicating and long lasting than the slight inconvenience of wasting a few seconds of your time with art that you don’t necessarily vibe with.  

 

These days, everyone wants to be an artist in one way or another. And to be fair, everyone is capable. But because of technology’s effect on making quantity a more important adjective than quality, it is difficult to filter through the masses of artists in order to discover one who truly wears the label well. I’m talking about someone with vision; someone with ingenuity; someone with a uniquely beautiful way to express their opinions and show us how they see the world. A true artist has something to say, and knows how to say it.

 

There are also those rare artists that have something to say, and know how to say it, how to say it, and how to say it again. Existing across multiple planes of creativity and producing cohesive art in differing forms, multi-media artists are, for lack of a better expression, the complete package. Perhaps they are confident enough with a keyboard and digital art to run an online magazine, perhaps they are handy with a camera and video editing software and are accomplished photographers and videographers, or perhaps they are so talented and well rounded that they are able to independently write, record, produce, direct, and edit every aspect of their own creativity from start to finish. From the first penstroke to professional music video and everything in between, I can only think of one artist with such a resumé.

 

Bronx-born, Honduras-raised, South Florida artist Rzu is a supremely talented musician and videographer whose hard work and widespread roots have graced him with a unique sound and an incomparably varied skillset. As an artist, Rzu is extremely hard to define.

 

His music is not like that of other artists currently oversaturating Soundcloud. His first releases were predominantly experimental and ahead of their time. Well versed in the world of electronic production, early songs like Deer God and Honduras successfully conveyed his extremely wide range of talent while simultaneously providing a window into his future music. Rzu followed up his debut with a plethora of singles in 2015, once again exhibiting his skill and his range, but with a more perfected and defined sound. Soundscape productions like Siesta Therapy showed off his chops as a producer while bangers like I Go Hard furthered his legitimacy as a rapper. Unlike artists that sometimes start out their careers working from multiple angles and then settle into the groove of one, Rzu has continued to improve as a rapper and as a producer. In 2016, Rzu introduced another skill to his set: vocals. Now a signature of some of his most popular tracks, Rzu first found success with his muffled, sound box vocal styling with the release of Crunchy. With a complete arsenal of production, vocals, and rap in his grasp, Rzu attacked the past year with a collection of singles, an EP, and an album titled Everyone Knows. Not many artists on Soundcloud bless their audiences with a collection of music versatile enough to play as the soundtrack for a road trip, a night out, and anything in between, but Rzu’s immensely diverse styling does just that. 

 

Laid-back, effortless bars, groovy, melodic production, and hypnotic, ghostly vocals. You think that would be enough to crown Rzu as a versatile artist. But that’s not all that makes him so hard to define. He also seems to be equally dedicated to the aesthetic spectrum of his art.

 

There are not many rappers in the modern hip-hop scene that opt to direct their own music videos, and if they do, they certainly don’t do it out of love. They do it out of necessity. Rzu however, is just as easily defined as a filmmaker, as he is defined as a hip-hop artist, a producer, and a songwriter.

 

His style and ability in film is most curiously presented in persona. The music video opens with a foxy young lady’s adventure around various aesthetically pleasing points in a city. As her presence for the first two minutes of the video leads the viewer along a progressively stranger path, symphonic tones of the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra’s Twisted Nerve­ build to a point of climax. When they fade, a politically charged hip-hop and punk inspired jam with visuals just as motivated emerges in place. Colorful flashes of Warhol-inspired faces blink on screen overtop a series of visuals displaying socioeconomic turmoil and Rzu himself. When it ends, the viewer is left with questions about life, art, and the difference between the two.

 

Of course, not all of Rzu’s videos carry such strong avant-garde styling. Though just as interesting and enticing as persona, Rzu’s visual experience titled day is perhaps a better example of his production and a better sampling of his music. Exhibiting three of his songs in the video, day takes the viewer on a journey alongside Rzu and puts on display his knack for visual storytelling. Watching the video, it’s hard to imagine the amount of work that went into the writing and recording of three tracks, and the filming and editing to blend all three into a single, comprehensive visual storyline. Hours and hours of hard work.

 

But hard work is exactly what we’ve come to admire about Rzu. In his four-year effort to improve himself as a rapper, a producer, a vocalist, and a filmmaker, he doesn’t seem to have lost sight of his goals, and has only continued to grow with each new release. Being featured on hip-hop blog behemoth ELEVATOR for The Grapevine, earning success and praise for the 2017 release of THE RZU EP, and the continued steady growth of his fan base have left him in a position primed for success.

 

It’s not every day that an artist crosses our path and introduces us to a multi-disciplinary empire on the verge of world domination, but we were lucky enough to have that experience with Rzu. His hard work, incomparable talent, and distinctly wide range of artistic ability are what separates him from the current pack of artistic ability-lacking internet musicians, and what will continue to push him further into success’s reach. Expect big things to come from Rzu.