Underground Hip-Hoppers Blu, Mickey Factz, Nottz “Stay Down”

Amongst his peers, he is one of hip-hop’s most respected figures. On the wider public scale, he’s often overlooked. Blu’s two wondrous releases, 2007’s Below the Heavens and 2012’s Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them (both of them with producer Exile) cemented the rapper’s status in the hip-hop underground. Alternately lush and hard-hitting, those releases offered a new angle to counter the rise of trap, while demonstrating Blu’s thoughtful rhymes with dexterous fashion.

A prolific artist who has released, to date, roughly 16 albums in these last 15 years or so, Blu returns with a new EP entitled The Narrative. Alongside rapper Mickey Factz and producer Nottz, Blu delivers a set of minimal, no-trills hip-hop (six tracks in all). The second single from the EP, “Stay Down” (featuring a hook by Iman Omari), is an unfussy, short but sweet delight, in which Blu trades his conversational rhymes with the ruminative verses of Mickey Factz. All dancing about architecture aside, the trio’s latest number should give hip-hop heads a gentle but solid jolt to keep their pulse rates clicking steadily.

Hear this song on the PM Picks Spotify playlist.