B.Hardy

With an album entitled PSYCHO – short for Personal Secrets You Couldn’t Hear Otherwise – Dallas native emcee B. Hardy comes in bearing a promise. The extravagant is often championed in contemporary hip-hop, and being your “actual,” real self is minimized for profit (word to Rick Ross). So to declare with your first major project that you’re going to expose listeners to “personal secrets” (especially when you’ve taken a two-year hiatus away from the rap game) is a tall, if ambitious order. In the early press releases, B. Hardy used as a billing tag for the project “Every PSYCHO needs a shrink,” and indeed, this is the role listeners serve over the course of PSYCHO’s 15 tracks: recipients of an invitation into the mind of a man in a mad world driven to madness and ultimately growth.

The therapy session is set up from the jump on the album’s cleverly entitled “Track Number One,” on which B. Hardy insists in his southern drawl that the story he has to tell on this track and the ones to follow is “the things that I won’t even tell my closest friends.” Certainly one of the best intros to an album thus far this year, “Track Number One” also benefits from having many quotable lines served up over the song’s countdown-like instrumental, like “My high levels of self-deprecation led to self-medication – that’s an act of self-preservation.”

Putting yourself and everything that’s on your mind out there is the prevailing theme of PSYCHO, and the tracks on which B. Hardy appears most vulnerable and susceptible to the listeners’ judgment are the tracks on which he shines the most. “Cartharsis,” featuring Keith Jacobs, is every bit as haunting as its title implies, propelled forward by a pensive beat and emotionally charged lyrics. The unrequited love tale “Gimme Your Love” is amazing, with an awesome old-school hook from Cash Skywalker and rhymes that toe the line between bitter and honest (“I thought you’d be impressed with my persistence, but you barely acknowledge my existence!”). And following up “Gimme Your Love’s” tone shift in the song’s final minute, with the deceptively carefree sounding track “Going Going Gone” (featuring Robby Blackwell of REDi) is just good album building, creating an effective one-two punch shot to the heart. And you may want to avoid “Goodbye & Good Luck,” featuring Rodne’ Jay during those moments when you’re alone at night caught in your feelings unless you want to lock yourself up in Marvin’s Room.

PSYCHO is also an exercise in versatility. The “Anti-Record” goes hard and loud. Hearing B. Hardy speeds up his flow on “Killer Dude” to match up with the song’s frantic beat was a pleasant surprise. “Hustle Grind Create” – packaged in the three-track-suite that is “Black & Mild Music” – is rotation worthy (and should really have been its own separate standalone track).

PSYCHO does seem to slack in the album’s second half. Perhaps it’s not even the quality of the songs following “Goodbye and Good Luck,” so much as it is that B. Hardy opted to come out of the gate swinging and delivered the project’s heaviest hitters earlier on; and as a result, what follows doesn’t hit nearly as hard. To their credit, “Beautiful Waste (Of My Time)” and “Replay Value” – which benefit from hilarious samples from The Boondocks and Pulp Fiction – do try, but on the whole, they lack the energy of the tracks before them.

Nonetheless, B-Hardy should be applauded for his Joe Budden-esque boldness all throughout PSYCHO. And even the Budden comparison is unfair to B.Hardy’s ability to encapsulate his personal stories and struggles into a very investing listening experience. Redemptive in some ways but relatable in many others, PSYCHO suggests that B-Hardy is a man emancipated of his demons – if only temporarily – and, now freed, poised to make something happen. To borrow the artist’s own words on “Catharsis,” “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. If you don’t dig it, you can listen to some different music.” But B.Hardy’s PSYCHO is certainly worth listening to. - Chan-Lo.com

Dallas rapper B.Hardy says it's "fortuitous timing" that he finally got around to posting his new single (and its subsequent music video) "Killer Dude" late last night and just in time for Halloween.

We're not sure we're buying this "accidents happen!" talk from the rapper, who also somewhat awesomely and hilariously goes by the name of RapBot-5000. But, hey, the song and video, B.Hardy's first releases in some two years, are still worth checking out nonetheless -- and not just because it's Halloween, either, although the song's Psycho sampling and Tubular Bells aping certainly do bring a certain charm to this holiest of days.

No, B.Hardy's merciless spitting over the Trifecka-produced beat stands capably on its own, and he's the first to acknowledge as much. Says B.Hardy of the track: "I want people to hear the single and say they had a good time listening to the record, even though they've just finished listening to four minutes of murder."

The impressive Ronnie West-directed visual accompaniment certainly adds to that aesthetic. Check it out below. Then, below that, download the track if you feel so inclined. It's the first single off of B.Hardy's upcoming full-length, which is fittingly being called Psycho and is set for a 2013 release. - CentralTrack.com

Crafting a single that immediately catches people off guard in the right way comes with a razor wire thin room for error. Dallas’ B. Hardy lifts the shrieks and thundering drums from Trifeckta for “Killer Dude” and winds around slicing and dicing with enough dark humor and bravado to keep everyone appeased. Recovering fully from vocal chord surgery, Hardy’s 2013 release of Psycho already comes equipped with a grainy-send off to horror/slasher films from famed director Ronnie West (“I Am Legend”). - DayAndADream.com

Dallas’ B. Hardy takes Gudda Gudda’s “I Don’t Like The Look” beat and leaves an undeniable impression on the track. Not to be confused with styles commonly associated with Texas, Hardy drops off laughable line after line, rhyming @ an upbeat pace that will leave your ears trying to catch up. Off his upcoming Throwaway Rhymes 7 mixtape, dropping on May 24th. - The Smoking Section

Artist: B.Hardy.
Album: Psycho.
Recommended If You Like: Killer Mike, what Fat Pimp would sound like if he didn't try to write "hits" and could string together some rhymes.
Also Worth Knowing: B.Hardy's latest release, Psycho, is a couple years in the making, and the rapper leaked the first single from the album, "Killer Dude," right around Halloween. Think the guy likes horror movies? - Central Track