Kyle Hubbard, Tomorrow in Retrospect

To me, hip-hop was buried a long time ago. They didn’t even have the decency to hit him upside the head with a shovel, sedate him, or anything. They just hog-tied him and chucked him in a six-foot hole, the poor bastard pleading for his life and hoping that anyone would come along and save him.

Then 50 Cent came by, with his no-lyric, mumbling-having ass and started shoveling the dirt in, and then Soulja Boy came in and poured cement in the grave. There was a lot of blame to spread around, from auto-tune to the “Stanky Leg”; a lot of hands got dirty choking the life out of hip-hop until its feeble heart beat no more.

But even then, as its corpse was rotting in abysmal entombment while Soulja Boy and Insane Clown Posse did shots of Faygo off his tombstone, I’d been hearing that there was a circle of underground Houston rappers that were plotting to resurrect him — that’s how I came across Kyle Hubbard.

“Think that I should rap about a chain or something / I think you should try to use your fucking brain for something.” — Kyle Hubbard on “New School Slang”

When I got sent a copy of Kyle’s new EP Tomorrow in Retrospect, I’d recently declared that I was taking at least a six month hiatus from listening to rap music, but I had met Kyle at a show not too long before, and he was this humble, unassuming dude who then jumped on stage and killed it. I found myself repeatedly reaching for my DVR remote so that I could rewind his verse, only to be like, damn, I’m at a live concert. It was more of the same listening to the EP, as pessimistic as I am towards rap, I found myself rewinding his verses again and again.

Kyle considers Tomorrow in Retrospect his shining achievement. He mentioned that it was at the point of making this EP that the synergy of Kyle Hubbard the rapper and Kyle Hubbard the person finally clicked in place. He considers the EP an ode to his personal journey as an artist; even though he’s been rapping for over ten years, it’s only been two years that he’s applied himself to making it a career. He’s already had several guest spots on albums, been featured on numerous mixtapes, and is a regular contributor to Houston Press‘s Monday “Rap Round Table” panel. In addition to chronicling his journey, he also considers the EP and apology of sorts to the relationships that have been affected and will be affected by what he calls the “obsessive compulsive tendencies” of being an artist.

Kyle is joined on this project with the likes of Big Pooh of Little Brother, K-Rino, and Preemo. The production is fantastic. It’s a nod to the classic, old-school beats of yesteryear, sample-driven beats with none of that house-techno flavor that seems to be all the rage in pop music nowadays. With tracks from DJ Corbertt, Royal Audio Tunes, and Basement Productions, among others, Kyle selected tracks that kept the flavor distinctly Houston. I can already hear old man hip-hop stirring in his grave. There may still be life in him yet.