The last place one might expect to find a lyrically precocious, LA-reared emcee, would be the long stretch of I-80 splitting Wyoming’s dusty plain from the rugged interior of its North. But then again, antagonizing the normative cliche has always been Murs’ trademark calling card; one that he has only refined since leaving the seminal underground group, Living Legends, and striking out on his own in search of that which is not often spoken of in urban music’s inner echelon: commercial indifference in the face of artistic progression.
This is not to say that Murs is any less the zealous businessman than any other hip-hop artist leveraging the hustle. It’s just that the pursuit of the almighty dollar doesn’t predominate his ambition. In fact, it’s Murs’ atypical need for constant creative growth that has seemed to find relevance amidst his following of similarly-minded, multi-genred, ADHD fans.
Murs’ voice is strained, an obvious byproduct of having spent weeks on the road supporting his latest album, the 9th-Wonder produced, aptly-titled Fornever. He sounds tired but willing on his drive through the West; interviews being perhaps the least desirable means to expend his vocal reserves before the coming evening’s show. Even with the grind of the road weighing heavily on the inflection of his West Coast drawl, the artist opens up quickly when asked about his upbringing.
“I’m not going to say that I knew that I would be an artist, but I knew that music was the way,” says Murs, his voice thick with the remnants of the concert the night before. “Probably at about 13, 14 and 15, I knew that I was going to rap and I was going to try to have a go at it. My mother and I argued, and my grandfather and family told me, you know, that whole thing about young black males… ‘You ain’t gonna be shit, your father wasn’t shit, you need a plan B; you need to go to college.’ I stood my ground and I told them this is what I’m going to do and now I make more money than almost anyone else in my family.”
It’s this impudence that has served Murs’ progression from indie darling to major label break-out and back again. His ability to tow the line between nearly every demographic, a testament to a belief in his own lyrical prowess and intuitive acuity as an artist, has afforded him a credibility with both the purveyors of the genre and also the suburban hordes who have looked to Murs for a defacto-introduction to the art of the underground emcee. One look at an audience at any given Murs show, and the myriad plethora of white, black and brown faces easily meld as the frenetic call and response between floor and stage grows louder. It’s hard to deny the cultural reach of the man and his music, as his lyrics often run the gamut from the sanguine to the discontent; inklings of an African American coming of age in a time of grand social evolution, and also the vitriol that comes with it. Although the wordsmith isn’t keen to constantly praise himself in the vain of hip-hop’s other elite, he is not shy about owning the rights to his success.
“My formative years were what drove me to be an independent artist,” says Murs. “People would tell me constantly that ‘you can’t do this and you can’t do that.’ We were told as Living Legends you can’t tour the world without a major record label and we were told you couldn’t do this without airplay and so on and so forth. I love my family more than anything else on this earth but they never believed in me from the start. My formative years made me a really self-sufficient, self-reliant person – to a fault now.”
It’s this vain of permanent self-reliance that has seen Murs, more often times than not, take the road less traveled - both in regard to his business enterprise, but as well as his seemingly juxtaposed creative output. In conversation, the artist speaks passionately about side-projects, ranging from his weekly podcasts with convicted felon Isaiah Toothtaker, to a recent comic book series entitled “Merch Girl.” And although his portfolio of work is varied and extensive, it’s hard to imagine these excursions into other mediums being made possible without some of the pitfalls he has experienced along the way.
Although initially signed to Definitive Jux, Murs made the move to the majors when Warner Brothers released his 2008 album, Murs for President. It was a relationship that would end when the label would renege on a promise to fully invest in the promotion of the record, even with high-profile appearances from the likes of Will.I.Am and Snoop Dogg; a move Murs has attributed to his unwillingness to compromise his style or intelligence at a time when the label insisted on pushing acts like Gucci Mane.
As an artist who had amassed one of the country’s largest independent fan-bases prior to the transition, the event seems to have only left a solidified appreciation in Murs’ eyes for the importance of doing things in a manner consistent with his own visions for career sustainability.
“Being an independent business person, an entrepreneur and an independent musician, I owe it to the legacy of the Ani DiFranco’s, Too Short’s and the E-40′s of the world to make better business decisions,” says the rapper. “I also have a responsibility to my community to change or add to what is considered to be the image of the black male and what has become the image of the young American, and even the image of hip-hop around the world. A lot of the older generation assumes that we assume no responsibility and we make no contribution to society and that we don’t care about our future and so on. That we don’t have a voice. And if we do have a voice, all it says is one thing. I’m trying to add another dimension or facet to that, with my responsibility to make my mother proud and have my personal legacy evolve, being that of the third generation of entrepreneurs and free African Americans in my family.”
At 32 years old and nearly twelve summers into into his professional existence, Murs’ bravado seems less about swagger and more about planting his feet in a proper position to tuck his shoulder against the door of America’s perceptions on urban commentary. And while there have been many atop soap boxes promulgating the ills of society’s problems at large, Murs has tempered his treatise with sincerity, even when his statements are colored by a sometimes willlful crassness.
“I would like to get back where rap was getting that credit; like Chuck D or N.W.A. But we’ve kind of stripped ourselves of the title, because every gangster rapper today uses the notion that he’s the social barometer and he’s the CNN of the streets to justify his misgivings and exaggerations about inner city life or life in America in general. I think I deserve it though and I’ve earned the credit to be that social barometer.”
More than any self-christened title, Murs is an artist whose reputation as an indie has finally come full circle. It’s certain as he pulls in from his long march across the West, that Murs is knowingly writing his future before anyone else has the opportunity to discover the plot for him.
Nicholas M.H. | RootSpeak Staff
Nicholas M.H. is one of the founders of both RootSpeak and the site's parent publisher, Truth&Rights Collective. Between giving his fellow editors a hard time, he fills the remaining hours of each day with his own writing and excursions into the worlds of media cooperatives and creative consulting for various inspired upstarts.
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