You know that feeling when you riding kicking it with the homie and you hear something dope and then the next song comes on and it’s good too so you finally ask your friend with the AUX “Who is that?”. Or the times when you stumble across a song and you gotta find out where it came from and just so happens you got time to stream the whole album because song after song is so good and you now feel entitled because you know it’s going to be a cult classic and you want to be able to say, “I been on this, y’all late” when it finally blows up. Even better the moment when you mention an artists name or song and their is one person in the room who shares your excitement that you can talk about it too while the rest of room is lost sheep following trendy trash songs they won’t remember next week. And you both know that these same lames will be on it eventually acting like they always knew.
Enter #NoFakeHandShakes by AV The Great. An album that exhibits WTF a album/mixtape/project of whatever you call it should sound like in a crowded competitive 2020 hip-hop culture. A seamless flow of songs with every sound and flavor, feel you can think of meshed into a cohesive damn near perfect underground hip-hop classic. The energy from the #NoFakeHandShakes Anthem rings off like it was purposefully made for a Festival crowd to sing along too and rebel against authority. The infectious “Caught A Body” makes you want to do good things to your sex partner and bad things to your opps at the same time. Then enters the Louisiana – Texas influenced “Love My Life” backdoored by one of the illest 3 verse songs in Hip-Hop probably ever. If we are talking bars and hook, “We Had Love (Ghost Of Nip)” isn’t the greatest Rap Song of all time but it’s gotta crack the Top100.
With Thousands of songs being released every day, That’s pretty damn good company to be in! And then you realize you are only 4 songs deep and it doesn’t seem like time is moving at all. You want to go back and rewind the song but the beat begins for the next song and this seamless flow of music captivates your ears like the great albums/mixtapes/projects you have heard before. Suddenly you don’t care about the artists followers, money, looks, you find yourself enjoying the mystery of not knowing and just finding out. And you have to listen again just to make sure you wasn’t tripping when you heard this nobody rapper that doesn’t have a fight compilation, murder case, almost been killed recently, just got out the pin hype. You got to listen again and again because you kind of remember why you fell in love with the culture and why you can’t let it go.
Maybe you like it or maybe you don’t. Maybe we hyped it and now you will hate on it. Maybe it isn’t hype and you feel what we feel. One thing is for sure tho. #NoFakeHandShakes by AV The Great is available on all digital platforms and has over 750,000 streams across all platforms since it’s release 11/11/19; distributed by EQDistro/RocNation and it’s going to keep rising.
