An artist in five songs: Big K.R.I.T. has range
Big K.R.I.T. is what baseball scouts would call a five-tool prospect
One of the best rappers on the planet isn’t a household name, but he isn’t exactly toiling in obscurity either. The criminally underrated Big K.R.I.T. has worked with everyone from Ludacris to Wiz Khalifa to Megan Thee Stallion to T.I. to Raphael Saadiq to BB King. Yet he still manages to be overlooked in most discussions about the top rappers out right now.
Back in 2013, he was one of a handful of peers challenged by Kendrick Lamar on the infamous “Control” verse, and he absolutely smoked several big names, going toe-to-toe with Kendrick, Joey Bada$$, and Danny Brown (among others), turning in easily the best verse on “1Train.”
Yet, mainstream attention has largely eluded him — in his own words, the Meridian, Mississippi native didn’t win the “geography lottery” — and his style is too country, too lyrical, too Black to be championed by today’s increasingly white and suburban hip-hop media apparatus.
His talent, though, is undeniable. He produces much of his own music and that sense of musicality is obvious in the way his voice bends and swerves over instrumentals. Listen to “Put You On” with Wiz and Smoke DZA and hear how much the track’s energy picks up when he’s on the mic. K.R.I.T’s flow is as dexterous as anyone’s and he has one of the great voices in rap today, a rich drawl that can match the rhythm of any beat.
While a few of his albums suffer from being overstuffed — a few of them would be certified classics minus a couple of tracks — it’s hard to listen to a Big K.R.I.T. project and not come away impressed by his range. He sounds just as much at home on a strip club anthem as on a heartfelt tribute to a family member and just as comfortable rapping on an avant-garde concept album as he does with a blues legend.
I’ve picked five tracks that showcase that remarkable range and that I think serve as a good intro to one of the most underrated rappers in the game. It took a good long while to settle on five, and I changed my mind a dozen or so times on a few of the slots. Let me know if I picked right or wrong in the comments.
Track 1: Ballad of the Bass (My Sub V)
Those who know me know that I’m a bit of an obsessive when it comes to making Spotify playlists. I take entire years’ worth of noteworthy albums, take their best tracks, and sequence them like whole albums. I take artists’ entire catalogs and agonize over their top 25 tracks. I come up with themed playlists by request for friends. But one of my favorite playlists took no thought whatsoever. It’s just all six installments of K.R.I.T.’s “My Sub” series.
Growing up, my dad was always into audio equipment. He made sure he had speakers set up at home to watch movies in surround sound, which made action movies so much more immersive. And his car always had speakers that bumped. To no surprise, I wound up being the same, and my little-ass Hyundai (hilariously) has a 12-inch sub that can shake the mirrors and windows when I really crank the volume up.
Naturally, a series of songs about bass, odes to the raw power of titanic subwoofers (sadly, I do not have two 15s like him but that might make my car’s chassis crumble), is right up my alley. And make, no mistake, the bass on My Sub V, the best in the series (and self-produced), is colossal (“rearview the mirror, always shakin’, if you behind me, I can’t see ya,” he raps on the track). If you need to test your new speakers or headphones, play this right away.
Track 2: Yesterday
“Yesterday” is a touching tribute to K.R.I.T.’s grandmother who passed not long before the release of the mixtape this track appears on. It’s a simple and sweet song, with an instrumental that radiates warmth as he reminisces about time spent in her home. “Like an autumn breeze, knocking all the pecans out the trees / Baking your fruitcakes for Christmas Eve / The smell of sweet potato pie make it hard to leave” is a vision of nostalgia that feels familiar to anyone who remembers time at grandma’s house as a kid. It transports me to my own grandmother’s home when I hear it. The foods may be different, but the feeling is the same.
Track 3: Higher Calling
“Higher Calling,” about two lovers on the verge of having a child, just sounds so damn good. The instrumental, by frequent collaborator Supah Mario, blends the low growl of deep bass with a spaced-out R&B sound, a perfect backdrop for Jill Scott’s sultry vocals and K.R.I.T.’s raps. That bassline was in my head for days the first time I heard it.
Track 4: Rhode Clean
Folks were more than a little surprised when Krizzle decided to release an R&B album in 2022. That element had always been present in his music, but I’m very certain that nobody was expecting him to do this much singing on one project. The album’s a bit of a mixed bag, with some clear highlights and a few tracks that fell out of my rotation quickly, but Rhode Clean is a jam. I nearly went with “So Cool” (probably the best song on Digital Roses Never Die) but he has a bit more to do as a vocalist on this one. The song’s ultra smooth and he does just enough vocally without stepping outside of his range and getting out of tune.
Track 5: Country Shit
This shit right here?
Country Shit, with its twanging guitars during the verses and its unmistakable vocal sample, was the world’s intro to K.R.I.T., and it’s a certified classic, an explosive, swaggering single and a bold declaration that Mississippi, along with the rest of the south, got something to say. The remix, featuring southern rap legends Ludacris and Bun B, is arguably even bigger, but I had to go with the original here. Like the candied yams and collard greens referenced in the hook, this is pure, unfiltered southern soul food.