Beat Im Suden CD - Import

' If anybody embodies that ideal, it's Xplicit. Of course, it's not a case of shock for the sake of shock or cultivating a tough image to sell records. Many hip-hop artists rap about the hard life but not all of them have the credentials to back up their words, however rhythmically or poetically those words may be delivered, however big or hook-laden their beats may be.

Xplicit is speaking from perspective of real, rough-and-tumble experience. His words aren't for show and he has bigger concerns than, offending listeners. Real life is what his music is all about - and it's that same tough urban growing up that gave him his love for the very music he uses to talk about it. 'Growing up in the ghettos of California, there was always some hip-hop blaring out of somebody's boombox on every corner or in somebody's loud sound system in their car,' Xplicit recalls. 'Listening to hip-hop was unavoidable to me.

'So was learning to love it. 'So many things are appealing about hip-hop ! For one thing, when I hear the beat of some good hip-hop, it makes my mind start racing. It make me just start moving and it expands everything going on at that time.

' Xplicit also declares his love for the genre because it is, he says, the only style of music he's ever known that could bridge cultural boundaries so effectively.