Ajsin is an Albanian-American who was raised in the Bronx NY, and now lives in Boston. He grew up with the Hip-hop culture inside of him all the time, but never took action until recently when he decided to drop his first two songs, “Bigger Than The Realest” and “Life Is Hell Trying To Make It Out”. These tracks signify the beginning phase of Ajsin’s recording career. The rapper’s passion for words pulses through the speakers on these cuts, as he takes his time to carefully choose his lyrics and the messages he wishes to send. Asjin is not obsessed with machine-gun rhyming, or twisted melodic verses, instead he takes his cue from many of the old-school rappers, who put substance over style.
There are reams of rappers who have made careers explaining how “real” they are, while building their brands on empty hype. Ajsin seems more down to earth as he concentrates on the rhymes he is writing, providing a ground-level view of human existence on “Life Is Hell Trying To Make It Out”. He unpacks the struggles, the grind, the hustles and the injustices, in a world built on suffering, despair, sacrifice and iniquity.
It is clear from his carefully chosen words on “Life Is Hell Trying To Make It Out” that Ajsin is a politically and socially aware emcee, maintaining a keen eye on his community and his culture. In a way, the track is a blistering broadside in the face of the slew of misguided and wrong-headed artists working to cheapen rap and stack papers, rather than focusing their energies on the issues that are really important to the community.
Ajsin experiments a bit with his style on “Bigger Than The Realest” where he dabbles in some bold self-empowering bars challenging the ethics of the players in the game and the industry as a whole, while still not forgetting about life’s unfair obstacles aimed at only a chosen few.
It’s an ambitious execution that lands where it is supposed to, as Asjin unravels life’s circumstances. In terms of powerful displays of pure skill and big ideas, this track shows a super-confident Asjin firing on all cylinders, eager to take his game to the public, and ready to change the world.
Asjin’s work on these songs, often recall the core of New York hip-hop in the 90’s – attention to lyrics centered on the skills of the emcee with the intention to make the audience think about an issue or subject in a different way. Challenging the listener’s core assumptions and viewpoints, doesn’t happen as often as we might hope for, in today’s music scene, so Asjin promises to be a very welcomed exception to the rule.
Connect with Asjin on Instagram @AJ.SIN83 and at RapChat @AJSIN1
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