This week, I had the pleasure to review a song called “Str8 Up” by a Lagos based female hip hop artist: Phlow. She’s apart of Str8Buttah Productions crew and has a lot of other work out like her EP, “Mind, Body & Phlow”, her upcoming LP “Flux” and consistently features DJ Teck-Zilla who helps with instrumentals in most of her work. My first impression of the accompanied video was, “Wow! This is unique!”. Not only did I like the production of the video, setting and good quality, but the way the video was structured was quite unique! Here and there the lyrics would be animated on the screen to emphasize the expressions of Phlow which was different than what I usually see in hip hop music videos. Not only that, but the beat to this song is like the young-ins say nowadays is “fire emoji”! I realized my head was bopping to the beat without much work. The beat had a modern hip-hop feel and went pretty well with Phlow’s lyrics. The overall feel of the song/video had a tough but determined and unapologetic theme to it which can definitely relate to a majority of how our recent female hip hop artists portray themselves in their songs/music videos today. All in all, I’d definitely give Phlow a round of applause for the effort put into the production and content of her music, it should not be unnoticed! Her unique unapologetic style is very inspiring not only for females in the music industry, but females like myself, who aren’t artists but can appreciate and respect other women for expressing themselves without anyone else’s permission or approval. Needless to say, Phlow has just gained a new fan!
Here are links to her works:
YouTube video to “Str8 Up”: https://youtu.be/_OMvWrozbIo
SoundCloud:https://soundcloud.com/phlowetry/str8-up
Audiomack: https://www.audiomack.com/song/diamond-media-360/str8-up