Translee

Translee is always a cat I’ve enjoyed hearing from. His projects are usually so diverse to the point that he can perform songs at the hood club, the cool indie show and the posh live music spot down town and they all come from the same project. His latest, Culture Junkie has him all over the place but it all makes sense at the end. If you ever have a chance to check him out live, do so. - Maurice Garland

About a week ago I finally gave Atlanta resident emcee Translee’s new mixtape, Culture Junky, some burn. Dude’s entertaining to say the least and seemed to switch styles with every track (not in an annoying way) – I’d highly suggest you give it a listen. For those not already up on game, get an intro with the OKP premiere of his new video for “Losers” featuring Bias The Black. The first half brings back fond memories of the instant classic “What’s Up Fatlip,” while Translee gives you the other side of the coin with the latter half of the video (that Everest spoof had me rollin). In his words: “With ‘Losers’ being the intro track from my latest project #CultureJunky, I wanted this visual to bring my words to LIFE! This rags to riches story is me showing people ‘The Good Life’ can be here today and gone tomorrow. Don’t be a Loser all your life!” Well said, and dude has plenty more to say on Culture Junky, so check it out - Shamz

Translee is a new Hip Hop artist now living in Atlanta… I must say this project ‘Culture Junky’ is quite an impressive set of songs. What stand out clearly is the lyrical and musical intensity as much as the diversity of subjects from one song to another, while the overall production on the mixtape has a unity in its colors. There is no faux-pas here. The music goes well with the lyrics and vice versa.

As ‘Culture Junky’ unfolds, we learn that Translee is a bright young man that never can’t be fooled by anything and doesn’t take anything lightly. Hopeful and positive but not gullible. In other words, mature. You might have some acute or caustic social observations here and there. On the catchy and minimalist ‘Everyday ain’t the same’, Translee fires “Modern day urban culture will try anything, and let it fry your brain just like the club fry chicken wings” or on the intense ‘Losers’ “The cops be behind us to remind us that slavery not far behind us”

Straying from the usual cliché portrayal of Hip Hop youth (although it’s fair to say those clichés are slowly disappearing nowadays), is one of the many charms of the mixtape. Translee’s outlook on himself often surprises by its sincerity when on the cool and jazzy ‘3H’ he confesses “Every time I go to church, people asking me if I’m working, we figure you been doing nothing, we ain’t seen you in service, I want to say, get up out my face, please mind your business, but we in church, I got all respect, I tell the truth, I been chilling, living life” or on the dope Todd Marshall produced ‘Victim’, he takes us through things he’s been through. I also like the self-irony on the lyrically busy ‘Cultur3 Junky’, one of the best track “Should I be a American good Samaritan, pay taxes and eat asparagus, am I the only one who think Stevie J’s not hilarious, … Atlanta b****** on the pole like election time, but I ain’t from Atlanta, my views of them is subjectified, electrified…”

Among many memorable cuts, we have to mention the cute ‘The return’ driven by a piano that gets him lyrically stimulating “P****, money, power & religion go hand in hand, I be going to war with dollars on my own Afghanistan, I never stand for lower standards, I’m high as hell, haters wishing I was landing, I might as well give you hell, I don’t need it myself” or the magnificent and conscious ‘Mind Prison’ “Ignorance will get you killed, but in the music industry it gets you deal”



In the thrilling ‘Beach’, Translee’s introspective poetry takes us to a distant end of day seaboard “In actuality, the time is two maybe three, I down my drink and I grab my keys, I found my war & I lost my peace, you might be on but I’m out of reach… Why does this get so hard, for me to play my part, feeling like an African man in the back of a van in the middle of a civil right march?” My favorite track on the mixtape….

There’s a trail of positivity all throughout the album and ‘COTN’ is no doubt the icing on the cake “Black is beautiful down to the cuticle, look at our tribe, nothing ever usual, down to the musical, look at our vibe, through all the gravity thrown on our way man, look at our rise… just because you’re the color of the night, it don’t mean you ain’t bright”

Rarely the music veers toward being radio-friendly but even when it does, like on ‘People Change’ which is still deep and has an interesting perspective on relationships, or the sensual ‘Somebody’s girl’, it never hurt the ears. ‘The City’ with its chopped and screwed Houston hook was probably the only track that wasn’t necessary on there… But dope tracks like ‘Climax’, intelligently produced by Todd Marshall and Chris Hunter, more than make up for the little slip-ups.

With such a lyrical potential and the proof that he can satisfy from top to bottom, it’s gonna be interesting to follow Translee’s growth in the future. ‘Culture Junky’ is definitely a great start. - Catch a Body Magazine

If I called Translee a weirdo I’m not sure that would be a good enough summation. You might think of Kool Keith-Black Elvis in Space or Cam’ron dressed up like the Pink Panther. Instead, it would be better to say Translee doesn’t believe in the conventional hip hop song. He packs hilarity, serious political and racial discussion, and sometimes word games into tracks and before his new Culture Junky mixtape it wasn’t typically done in an organized fashion.

The way people felt about Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap last year is how I feel about Culture Junky. The same kind of super-lyrical word flipping is displayed here and in a dizzying fashion. Even the second track (The City) which is supposed to be a slowed down syrupy DJ Screw tribute is acrobatic to the point where you might break into applause “Conversate anonymous and contemplate hypothesis, a weed smoke sarcophagus, an Alabama narcissist shaking like its parkinsons…” if the tape was all word games it would go from amazing to annoying pretty quickly.

Out of sixteen total tracks Todd Marshall produces nine of them and proves to be a capable ringmaster for the circus unfolding over his sonic landscape. He provides the thick, full flavored, straightforward 1-2 that propels Translee into weirder and weirder subject matter. On Climax the story of picking up a young lady at the Waffle House and becoming sexual partners provides details that the sex itself lasts only ten minutes (I literally fist pumped at hearing this). I’m willing to bet Trans never even thought about adjusting it into an “all night long” situation. He doesn’t see his lyrics as an opportunity to build a fictional world to make himself a superhero in. Instead of creating the gangsta rapper version of Schwartzenegger in Commando he’s having fun rhyming basketball player Kerry Kittles with the candy Skittles.

Culture Junky is not juvenile but it does have a visible streak of immaturity that makes its seriousness easier to take. The seriousness of songs like Victim and Mind Prison are for some and not for others (although if you think Trans push to not vote for cowards is controversial your voting record sucks) but that’s not the big stumbling block here. Translee is not on the beat. As in control of each song as he is his flow isn’t even on this planet. You either learn to love it or never get past it and that’s your prerogative.

As someone who used to live on lyric websites and enjoy peeling back line after line from new releases Culture Junky is a hazy dream. It’s loaded with jokes, nonsense, real talk, love and one of the year’s best collaborations (Cold featuring Sy Ari Da Kid). Southern rap doesn’t just have great rappers it has layers of them. The famous ones are just the radio/pop exoskeleton; once you get past that you find projects like this and Sy Ari Da Kids Ultrasound 2: The Birth, each mixtape leaves you wondering why everyone doesn’t already love this guy. - Dan- O (Free Music Empire)

A native of Huntsville, AL, but Translee is not your standard Southern rapper. In fact, it would be more fitting to call him an MC or lyricist. Listening to this album, an immediate stand out is his amazing command of wordplay. I found myself feeling like a kid on Christmas morning as I tried to catch every metaphor and simile. But, just in case lyrics mean nothing to you, know this album is still worth your attention. Tracks like “A Days Work” with its “Saturday Love” sample and “The City” tipping its hat to Houston’s chopped and screwed genre, are more than “bump” worthy. And no matter the personal preference, “Climax”, which takes the word itself and verse for verse gives you a different scenario a la Jay-Z’s use of bitch in 99 problems, is by far destined to be a fan favorite. Overall, if you love Hip Hop like I love Hip Hop then there is no reason not to add this to your collection. - Spin Cycle