TaReef KnockOut – Queen City Sounds and Art

TaReefKnockOut1_crop — TaReef KnockOut, photo courtesy the artist

TaReef KnockOut is a hip-hop artist from Tallahassee, Florida and the track “Family Recipe” from his new album Local Rapper features a refreshingly honest, aspirational yet not boastful flow of words against a backdrop of spare percussion and an elegant, melancholic horn sample. TaReef talks about the depression that’s been coursing through his mind and some biographical details that bring some heaviness to the song but rather than weighing everything down, TaReef takes the death of his grandmother and the drama of scene politics and turns it into a drive to do something legitimate and respectable beyond the people who think they know you and want you to reach for the dull lower rung just like they do. In every local music world so many artists aspire to play for drink tickets and exposure and being “honored” by being included on play lists that merely mention them and a single song by name, playing some major opening slots and after two or three years being discarded by the local press and clubs in favor of the next biggest flavor. TaReef envisions more for himself as indicated by the line “ambition over riches, the world gon’ love my vision.” If you don’t have creative ambition as an artist you end up being a one trick pony with a short career and without vision that’s all you’ll ever be. TaReef by expressing these ideas in spite of so many things in life as a stumbling block tells us we owe it to ourselves to imagine better for ourselves in our own lives too and to look beyond our immediate context which can so often seem to be all there is since it’s all around us and can pen in our dreams if we let it. TaReef just benefited from a little faith from his family and at least some modest life goals upon which to build even more. Listen to “Family Recipe” on YouTube and follow TaReef KnocOut at the links provided.