Kil Ripkin: Not You [Video]

Kil Ripkin’s video for “Not You” has been sitting in my inbox for a minute. Since running BirthplaceMag.com can be time consuming, backlogs are inevitable, so from time to time, I dig through emails I’ve flagged and get to the joints I may have initially passed over. When I do so, and stumble across something worth sharing, I’m simultaneously happy to have discovered something, and annoyed at myself for sleeping on it the first time around.

Such is the case tonight, as I finally took a look/listen to “Not You” from Brooklyn MC Kil Ripkin. With a voice vaguely reminiscent of Big Daddy Kane, and a flow sculpted from seeds planted in hip hop’s Golden Era, “Not You” is a modernized throwback to the pro-Black, meant-to-instruct-and-uplift joints dropped from Africa-medallion-wearing, Nation of Islam-following, MCs of the 90s, over a highly head-noddable Eric G. sped-up-sample, boom-bap track. It’s been on replay since I started writing this up, and exemplifies hip hop as edutainment. Simply, this is a hot joint, and provides a strong visual counterpart, directed by Science Projects.

Ripkin is part of The Coalescence, an underground hip hop “supergroup” consisting of Torae, Vega Bennenton and Wally Suede, and is further example of the wealth of New York hip hop that deserves to be seen and heard. We’ll be on the lookout for more from Kil Ripkin and The Coalescence.

Sorry we slept. Glad we awoke.