I admittedly was about half a year late to the Big K.R.I.T party.
I watched people on my Twitter feed keep going back and forth virtually yelling “LEMME TELL YA BOUT DIS COUNTRY SHIT!” and wondering just what the hell they were talking about.
It’s the fall of 2010. Little did I know at the time, I was less than six months away from being kicked out of a job I gave my all for but came to hate anyway. One of the good things about my time in Southern Maryland was I made friends with other sports writers and my homeboy Trey (even though he was working at the rival paper that was kicking our asses) and I used to talk music all the time.
One Friday evening before a football game we were both covering, I pulled my car alongside his because he told me I HAD to hear Big KRIT for myself. Going in sight unseen and music unheard, I had no idea what I was going to hear, but once Trey ran through “Moon & Stars,” “Somethin’,” “No Wheaties” and finally “Country Shit,” KRIT had a new fan in me.
Today marks the 13th anniversary of KRIT’s first mixtape, or free album as he called it, K.R.I.T Wuz Here, featuring those tracks, “Children of the World,” “Return of 4eva,” “See Me On Top” and much more. Most of it is available for stream now but the full, sample-laden version that dominated ears for so long lives on through DatPiff downloads and burnt CDs (remember those?!).
KRIT himself is Justin Scott, a young man from Meridian, Mississippi influenced by the first real wave of Southern hip-hop: 8-Ball and MJG, UGK, Outkast, Three 6 Mafia and so on. He was 23 when K.R.I.T Wuz Here dropped and even at such a young age, the maturity dripping from the subject matter he rapped over his own soulful swinging production was remarkable to hear.
There’s a lot of introspection and emotional intelligence on the album, especially on “Children of the World” (a song about the perils of a 2008-recession world) “I Gotta Stay” (grieving and mourning loss) and “They Got Us” (pretty much the same as COTW). KRIT was an artist who’d already come to understand his deal with Def Jam was not going to work out in his favor, also that the world just wasn’t kind to poor Black people so that energy is all over the album.
There are also good times aplenty, most notably for me on “Moon & Stars” featuring H-Town legend Devin the Dude. It’s an all-time, summer night with the windows down, cruising aimlessly solo or with friends/a love interest classic. It’s one of my go-to songs when the weather’s good and I don’t feel like being in the house, so I’ll just hook the aux up, start my car and go.
As there is now a podcast dedicated to the “Blog Era” of hip-hop, KRIT features prominently in this era because of his free albums and collaborations with Blog Era darlings Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y Spitta.
Somehow, he flies under the radar as one of the best multi-talented artists of the day. There are people who just don’t get or didn’t get him and that’s their loss, honestly. The flow, the honesty, the swagger, the production (which Def Jam neutered by not giving him a big enough budget for sample clearances) – it’s all there.
I realize I sound like a hater every time I say this, but when Def Jam touted their signing of 2 Chainz (and don’t get me wrong – 2 Chainz makes FUN music) over KRIT, that there was trouble ahead for him. Of course he’s independent now and has released critically acclaimed albums 4eva is a mighty long time, K.R.I.T Iz Here and Digital Roses Don’t Die, an experimental album that feels more like a southern funk album than traditional hip hop.
It’s no surprise that substance loses out to flash in hip-hop, or any genre for music for that matter – it’s the way of the world. But Big K.R.I.T continues to be a consistence source of good energy, great bars and bomb beats even if it appears the acronym he chose for himself – King Remembered In Time – has become not just a rap name, but the story of his career.
