Spoken Honestly By An Honest Cowboy

There comes a time when the latest buzzing, blue collar, “grind until I make it” rapper becomes a glaring paradox: he makes it. When he makes it with perhaps the most puissant posse in the industry, that paradox becomes much tougher to shake. It’s what Ohio product Stalley faces on the heels of dropping his debut LP for Maybach Music Group. After all, how can an emcee that thrives off of DIY hustle survive with label mates that boast about spending six figures every night?

It begins with honesty—something that’s lost far too often in the culture of free, Internet mixtapes. “My raps tell a lot about where I been…where I came from,” Stalley spits on the intro track of his 2011 tape, Lincoln Way Nights (Intelligent Trunk Music). He’s not lying: while Stalley lacks the braggadocio of Rick Ross and the charisma of Wale, he compensates with a penchant for storytelling and a vow to keep it real. That vow is the premise for Honest Cowboy, Stalley’s fifth mixtape and second in as many years for MMG. With a title derived from fascination with his father’s work on a ranch and a poignant black-and-white vlog series to hype the project, Honest Cowboy was expected to be another breath of fresh air in a summer full of them for Hip Hop. For the most part, it doesn’t disappoint.