Nick Grant has taken inspiration from Mya and JAY-Z‘s 2000 classic “Best Of Me, Part 2” for his latest freestyle, on which he makes quite a bold claim.
Released on Wednesday (February 21), the reworked version of the Trackmasters-produced track hears the North Carolina native claiming Top 5 status.
“Carolina’s cool kid, hottest n-gga out the south/ Top 5 without a doubt, n-gga I survived the drought!” he raps.
Fans were clearly impressed, as the comments section under the Instagram clip was filled with fire emoji after fire emoji and compliments from the likes of Tweet, Lute, Deante Hitchcock, Page Kennedy and more.
Last month, Nick Grant sat down with HipHopDX to promote his latest album, SUNDAY DINNER, and was asked about Fabolous’ recent sentiments that top-tier lyricism is hard to find in Hip Hop today.
While he agreed, Nick named a few newer artists he has his eyes on, and noted that they need to be ushered in by bigger artists to get the shine they deserve.
“We gotta just stop hiring people that love the trolling, that love all the negative stuff that just comes with it and people that just love the microwave shit,” he told DX. “We gotta get back to actually living and breathing the culture The artists as well too.”
He then highlighted some of the rising talent he thinks people should be paying attention to: “It’s a lot of different young artists: the Marqus Claes…the Reuben Vincents of the world. We gotta push that. I been here for a minute now but these guys are younger.”
For Nick Grant, he believes that in order for the majority of new talent to succeed they need to be ushered in by bigger stars, much like Lil Wayne did Drake, JAY-Z did J. Cole, Rick Ross did Wale, and Kanye West did with multiple stars such as Kid Cudi, Big Sean and CyHi The Prynce.
“It’s tough when I say this and I always get push back, but lyricism is a[n old] boys’ club,” he explained. “I feel like you gotta be ushered in. I feel like the J. Coles, the Drakes … these guys were ushered in by [JAY-Z and Lil Wayne]. That’s how I feel about it. If these guys that we know and love say you got it, we believe them. We trust them. Even Kanye [came in via] JAY-Z.
“I get a lot of push back from that, like, ‘No it doesn’t matter!’ But I feel like it matters.”