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After watching veteran emcee Lady Luck lyrically dismantle newcomer Reece Steele this past weekend (it got so bad, Luck even served up Reece's mother at one point during the battle), what little hope I may have had for a new wave of female lyricists to emerge disappeared faster than Steele's post-VH1 career. A small bit of faith in the concept of the female emcee was restored, however, after I received a mixtape, Real Fresh, from a rapper out of North Hollywood, California named Raven Sorvino. When I first saw the name "Raven," I admittedly had a brief flashback to some bad memories of a certain Huxtable kid rapper, but after giving the mixtape a listen I was pleasantly surprised.
Though she looks and sounds rather young, Raven's actually been in the game for over a decade (according to her bio, anyway), allegedly having performed at one point for Biggie and Puff back in the day in an attempt to get a record deal with Bad Boy. She never managed to get onto a major label, but her career seems to finally be on track after signing with eklect records, with this mixtape being released in advance of her first solo album. There are a few rough spots on the tape, but what caught my attention was a remake she did of Jay-Z's Girls, Girls, Girls, flipping the entire concept of the song into something more appropriate for the financial climate of 2008. Check it out:
Raven Sorvino - Bills, Bills, Bills
At this point, she is by no means a finished product, but she does show a lot of potential. Raven's still at the stage of her career where she hasn't quite found her own voice as an artist, sounding far more comfortable on other rappers' instrumentals than she does over new beats. For a mixtape, that's not a huge issue - and she seems to use it to her advantage, filling up the tape with classic beats from the likes of Pete Rock, Biggie and Souls of Mischief - but the real test for her as an emcee will be releasing a full album of original material.
Here's one more track off of the mixtape:
Raven Sorvino - You Know My Steez freestyle
Here's the link to download Raven's Real Fresh mixtape (direct link to .zip file)
And finally, here's a video she put together for one of her original songs:
Raven Sorvino - Who I am
10/1/2008 10:49:01 PM posted by Fresh