Caleborate Is A Soulful MC With A 2017 Album That Should Not Be Overlooked (Video)

One year ago this month, Berkeley, California MC Caleborate made his Ambrosia For Heads debut with “Game Over.” In retrospect, he was only getting started. This year, the artist who has collaborated with IDK, Sylvan LaCue, and Nef The Pharaoh released Real Person. The TBKTR album follows last year’s thematic 1993 with a very human step forward.

His most recent video “Soul” captures that quite well, in two separate treatments. It is a simple backdrop and colorful overlays (in “the LOVE version”). For “the MONEY version,” the visual tracks where the bread goes during a day-in-the-life, and how it does not seem to last.

In both renditions, Caleb’ raps that our souls are what we always haveā€”no matter other challenging circumstances. He spits about his hurdles as a hungry artist pushing through. “This is for my day one, ride or die, free the ankle ni**as / Used to have to spam and eat Cup O’ Noodles for dinner / Hit my mama house to do my laundry in the winter / Still on my auntie couch but I’m gonna get out in a minute / We was on that block tryna make a way, make a way out / Granny died, had to tell mama ‘It’s okay now’ / What you know about no lights and water at 16 / And no car to drive when you got a girl, but you chasing a dream / And you grown as f*ck and they tell you to get a job and quit playing / And your bank account is so immature ’cause that sh*t ain’t got no sense / And every ni**a ’round your city hate on you just for being yourself / But you can’t stop and you won’t stop, you just tighten up your belt.

Throughout the album, Caleborate’s verses deal with his complicated relationship with his father, the pursuit of Rap dreams, and using no facade in his songwriting.

#BonusBeat: The official full Real Person album stream:

The LP features 1-O.A.K., Donte Thomas, and MVCK.