One of the most slept-on cities in California, music-wise, is Long Beach. It’s the hometown of Sublime, Vince Staples, and Snoop Dogg, of course, but they’ve also got a lot of prolific MCs who are more or less underground — who haven’t gone mainstream yet. One of, if not the best example, is Huey Briss.
I basically found out about Briss through a friend. I can’t remember the friend’s name off the top of my head, but I let him perform at a show I set up, and he ended up telling one of his homies about that, a rapper named OHSEA, who’s from Long Beach. OHSEA hit me up to get on a show in the future and although his music was dope, that just never came to fruition for some reason, but we did follow each other on social media to stay in contact. One day, OHSEA posted a clip on Instagram of Huey Briss’s music video for “Gil Scott Never Lied” and I probably played that 10 times a day for a week. I’ve been keeping up with Briss since then and, despite all his recent wins, like his music video for “Regardless” getting posted on No Jumper’s YouTube channel (which is no easy feat), he hasn’t let any of them get to his head — if anything, he’s been grinding harder.
Briss’s latest album, Grace Park Legend, is filled with bangers, but the stand-out track is the album’s namesake by far. The beat’s got a heavy jazz influence with an even heavier bass and kick, along with a sample of a woman singing for the main melody, which Briss expertly incorporates into the end of each of his verses. Briss raps about various neighborhoods in the LBC and some of his experiences growing up there, with a fair amount of quotables in between. I might argue that the music video’s even more entertaining than the song, since it has a documentary/visual memoir vibe to it that makes it feel way more personal. I’ve been playing it religiously and apparently Snoop Dogg must like it, too, since he posted the music video on his Instagram story (which, again, is no easy feat). Keep an eye on him because I’m sure he’s got even better work on the way.
Originally published at https://wspus.org/2021/09/world-socialist-no-4-summer-2021/.