Isaiah Rashad - Cilvia Demo EP

Isaiah Rashad - Cilvia Demo EP

Score: 8.5

Sounds like: Do You Want More?!!!??! era Roots meets Outkast meets Kendrick Lamar

Throughout his Cilvia Demo EP, Isaiah Rashad bounces back and forth between two personas: the tortured street poet and the hyper-confident banger. As such, much of your reaction to this mixtape will depend on your patience for schizophrenic hip-hop. This is the type of collection that careens between tracks about "bitches and blunts" to soulful ruminations on the nature of urban life as if it was a natural progression.

It is in this duality that Cilvia Demo confounds and ultimately thrills. An entire album of bangers or navel-gazing can become monotonous and feel put-on, like someone trying to convince the world that he's either hard or sensitive. The most interesting musicians and artists understand that they - like anyone else - are often both and many more things; that arrogance and anxiety aren't mutually exclusive, and that anger often follows confusion.

While Drake succeeded in much the same fashion with last year's highly successful Nothing Was the Same, it's hard not to take most of his chest-beating with a grain of salt. Knowing what we know about his background, his success seems to reside more in sheer lyrical talent and musicality than in authenticity. Rashad, on the other hand, feels authentic in both suits, and while his delivery can often sound derivative, the raw power displayed in the majority of Cilvia Demo more than compensates.

Tracks like "Webbie Flow (U Like)," "R.I.P. Kevin Miller" and "Modest" are trunk-rattlers that exhibit enough character and lyrical agility to transcend the term. While they may not win any awards for subtext, the quick shifts in cadence and occasional one-liners, coupled with beats that ride an intriguing line between old school and current hip hop, keep things remarkably fresh. In the context of the entire collection, it's not surprising to see most of these tracks at the front-end - Rashad seems to be finding his own identity in real time, and each song crawls a bit deeper into his psyche and reveals a bit more about his character.

The tracks that exhibit the true promise of the heights this young artist can scale are those that find him letting his guard down the most. Back-to back tracks "Soliloquy" and "Tranquility" drop the veil and usher in a painful self-awareness that continues to appear throughout the remainder of the EP. Subsequent tracks often find typical street-bragging paired with personal revelations and a realization that the most appealing aspects of urban life are often the most detrimental.

Take, for example, these lines from "Tranquility," - "Them hard streets make a militant man/Fuck a bitch, be as real as you can/Our education, they tend to say we killers again/But I'd rather give this living a chance" and "I've been on pills since a little one/Start with Advil then we level up/I wonder if my son gon' trust me, after songs so ugly/Bout his moms, ain't mean to see the world so crummy." Rashad is aware of the expectations placed upon him as a young black man in urban America while also recognizing that his actions perpetuate these expectations. When he gets to talk of suicidal thoughts, cutting himself, his alcoholic father, drug abuse, and the search for God in "Heavenly Father," it's done so without a hint of self-pity; he knows that these things can be interpreted as weaknesses unless he addresses them head-on and then tosses them aside.

Ultimately, the success of Cilvia Demo lies in all of these things - the surface-level marriage of good music with Rashad's engaging, multifaceted delivery; the easy comparisons to A Tribe Called Quest, Outkast, The Roots and Kendrick Lamar that don't overshadow his accomplishment as much as they emphasize it; Rashad's willingness to address his internal struggle to want to defy a label while being drawn to the actions that define it, and the confusion of facing demons without allowing himself to be affected by them. 

If he continues to both be able to live in and transcend his environment, Isaiah Rashad could well end up a true force in hip-hop.