A short note on the Texas rapper Z-Ro
He’s a troubled man who has done real harm, but I adore him.
CONTENT NOTE for effusive praise of a deeply flawed man who is also one of my very favourite artists.
Today happens to be the 46th birthday of the rapper Z-Ro, who is from the “Mo City” section of Houston, Texas and is definitely one of my top 30 or so rappers in the history of the game. (Of all the rappers I truly love, he has very few rivals as the most underrated, at least in terms of how wide the gap is between how revered he should be and how few rap heads care about him or even know that he exists.) He has a sharp pen, a fast flow, and an incredibly rich and emotive singing voice, but what I love most about him is that he has written a very wide variety of songs expressing very poignant and deeply felt emotions, including some which reveal a capacity for startling and moving empathy. He struggles with serious mental health problems that give him an obsessively misanthropic paranoia regarding his expectations that he will always be mistreated and betrayed by virtually everyone else around him, and unfortunately he has also been physically violent towards at least one of his girlfriends. He is also an ardent conservative Christian who routinely makes reference to the redemptive effect Jesus Christ has had in his life (and to the substitutionary atonement) and who sternly disapproves of homosexuality and transgenderism. But I think he is one of the greatest songwriters I’ve ever encountered in any genre, and the best songs he has written are so powerful that I almost can’t bear to discuss them at length lest I fail to do justice to their beauty, on top of which the beats he chooses to rap on almost always hit that “country rap tunes” sweet spot for me, especially when he is working with the excellent production duo Beanz N Kornbread.
“I Don’t Give A Damn” is probably my favourite of his songs – the beat is rather weak, but every time I listen to that song, which I’ve been doing several times a year since about 2010, I am startled by the breads of his compassionate vision – from Death Row inmates to collegiate strippers to AIDS victims to blinkered white racists who assume he must be a criminal, he shows tenderness towards everybody. It’s a really remarkable song. And there are many more on the playlist to which I have linked above that are equally as good. As of January 2022, I’m newly obsessed with his recent single “Man Hold Up”, on which he stunts hard. And he also has great chemistry with Devin The Dude, Paul Wall, Juvenile, Bun B, Krayzie Bone, Scarface, Killa Kyleon, Freddie Gibbs, the late and wonderful Big Moe, his blood cousin Trae Tha Truth, and many of my other favourites. If you can stomach the fact that he has committed some acts of genuine cruelty, I truly recommend checking him out! He is a deeply flawed man, but his music is very special.
I will close with something I wrote on Facebook in June of 2015, around the time of the release of his stunning single “This Ain’t Livin’”:
“Z-Ro's music is so often such a gaping wound on wax that listening to it can feel unsettlingly voyeuristic, but that same startling, “Holy hell, is he really telling us this?” candour makes it feel like an invaluable gift. Plus his rapping, singing, and taste in warm, musically rich country rap tunes” beats are all unfuckwithable. Such beautiful, powerful music."