Sharlok Poems is someone who has always chosen artistry and creativity over genre trends. Releasing a number of albums with the group L.A. Symphony and two solo albums, Poems' brand of hip-hop has always been far above the industry's standard of self-centered rhymes and hip-hop cliches. His approach is, well, poetic, to say the least. At the same time, Poems seems to have the ability of courting both substance and accessiblity in all his projects.
His latest album, Blooming Sounds, which features production from the likes of Ohmega Watts and 20-37, is a slower approach to his previous work, but an approach that Poems says is natural. "It's kind of like a head-nod record where you can just sit and kind of fall into the music and really listen to what I'm saying," he says, "I didn't go into it like, 'OK, this needs to be the first single or this needs to be the title track,' I wanted it to evolve as it went along. I wanted the album to sound as raw as possible."
Releasing solo projects has allowed Poems to expand on a lot of ideas and issues that don't always pan out in a setting with four other artists. 'I think the difference with L.A. Symphony is you only have so many bars to be album to express yourself," Poems says. "Whereas [by myself], I have a complete song to be able to let everything out."
With a lyrical appraoch that moves deftly from personal poetry to social commentary, tackling issues like racial equality and violence against women-a subject that isn't brought up in too often in the hip-hop world-Poems seems to be doing pretty well on his own. -Harbor Partin / Relevant Magazine
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