Speak No Evil - Meet Clr Conscience

There’s something to be said for the thinking man’s rapper. While the Silentos and YCs of the world captured specific moments in time, the key to any great career is longevity. There is a nobility in an artist that plays chess in a generation where so many moves are blatantly rooted in the short-term. This is why it is my pleasure to present to you Baltimore’s Clr Conscience.

Conscience is a throwback to artist of the past. He’s the kind of dude that you could imagine commanding the stage at an open mic night while Moesha, Tia, and Tamera sip smoothies and snap their fingers in approval. Look at the acapella rift he does to open his most recent video “Heartbeat (God)/Count Your Chips” before he moves into traditional rhymes.

Conscience combination of rap and poetry was influenced by the usual suspects; Wale, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar. It was honed on the campuses of CCBC (The Community College of Baltimore County) and Towson University. Though he started writing poetry in high school, CCBC’s Micology and Towson’s Voices are two spoken word groups that Conscience credits for helping him step up his pen game. His involvement in those groups made the stuff that he wrote in high school look like “nursery rhymes”.

Unfortunately, life sometimes throws curveballs and Conscience was not exempt. Throughout his brief career, he’s seen his share of setbacks from janky videographers to numerous delays. His trademark positive mindset has helped him keep the bullshit in the rearview as the days move towards the release of his debut project Stricly 4 My Negus. Inspired by Kendrick Lamar’s declaration of black pride on To Pimp A Butterfly in conjunction with 2pac’s Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., Conscience assures me “the project is almost finished”. This printing is the first time that the project’s title has been made public so consider yourself on the ground floor of something special. Expect the first single from the project this week exclusively on The Demo Tape.

The past year has seen Conscience expand his brand by performing not only in Maryland but in D.C. and New York. If his newest single “U” is any indication of what’s to come then expect big things from the Baltimore native in 2017.

The constant search for enlightenment drives Conscience as an artist and as a man. He stressed to me the importance of peeping game through his music. The search for peace as a whole is a theme that you can expect to be constantly explored throughout Strictly 4 My Negus.

“The stuff that’s going on in the world the stuff the affects me, the stuff that I have a passion for fixing as much as I possibly can through myself in any way, all of that”

This quest to change the way that people think is especially prominent in one of Conscience earlier tracks, “Lord Baltimore”.

The metaphor throughout the song of crabs in a bucket (fitting if you know anything about Baltimore) goes a long way. Despite all the love that he’s gotten, Baltimore is a city known for sporadic support of its local artist. Taking the idea a step further, Conscience went in-depth during our conversation, tracing the lack of love in the black community back to ideologies taught to us during slavery as an attempt to divide blacks culturally. The key is unity.

“If we don’t clap for each other and genuinely mean it ain’t nobody really trying to look out for us so we need to help ourselves.”

This is the kind of intellectual we’re dealing with here. Part rapper, part poet, part philosopher. Along with that desire for unity is a positive mindset driving Conscience on the daily. Following him on any social network will see your timeline filled with inspirational messages on how you personally can be better as a person. Conscience described these messages as “notes to myself that I hope can help somebody else”. As far as his goals for the rest of the year the message was loud and clear;

“Make this money, get this art out, work on myself, then make this change in the world”

Best of luck my friend.