Tosten Burks is beatified.
One of Chicago’s best young lyricists this side of the tweakers, twists 2013’s most iconic sample into lamentations of lifestyle, praying he’s not too preachy but preaching nonetheless. To the boys carrying guns to the beat, to the girls leaving their cherry stems in the street: everyone’s hanging too high to see the lows and aiming too high to leave them. Hedonism is never heroic.
Whereas Kanye and HudMo exploded Billie Holliday fireworks, OnGaud lets her pain whisper and echo in the wind. Mick prefers the open space. He carries songs with his pen – counting loopholes, drowning in truth, sipping Ginger ale out of a chalice in the Chateau de Chenonceau. He’s headed places, but for now he’s just hanging.
