While many artists may want to achieve the same fame and fortune as musicians before them, other artists want to carve their own path in the music world and achieve success on their own terms. Nicholas Hobson, also known as YOU, is an Edmonton, Canada-based hip-hop artist with a desire to do just that. Above all, he strives for “YOUnity” with his fans, who he hopes can find words and music they can relate to when they hear his beats and lyrics.
What drives YOU internally is to have something in his life that he can look back on and gauge his improvement from his own perspective rather than based on what a coach, boss, professor or lover says. The competition, he says, is “between me and YOU, He describes YOUnity as a movement where someone betters himself to better the community, reaches out to others out of strength rather than desperation and seeks to understand rather than be understood.
YOU uses his music as a vehicle to achieve this purpose: to deliver smooth, evenly paced lines that touch on any number of concepts that he has been interested in or exposed to. Finding inspiration in such artists as Jay Electronica, Blu, Action Bronson and Sean Price, YOU has developed a penchant for ear-catching beats, ranging from dreamy and ethereal to hard-hitting and funky. His lyrics are influenced by the lack of mental blocks that would keep him away from ideas that people may not like at first. YOU is real, and he brings it all every time he steps up to the mic.
Most recently, YOU released his latest recording, the five-track Ep Costume Party Gangsta, which he dropped on Halloween last year, and he also released three new videos on his YouTube channel: “Lipstick Stained Cigarettes”, “Far Away” and “Bucket”. “Lipstick Stained Cigarettes” will also be featured on an upcoming installment of WiFi PR Group’s digital mixtape series, lndie Anthems. The compilation is a collection of international independent artists who WiFi PR wants to put on the radars of music lovers and industry tastemakers the world over, and that is soon to include YOU and his featured track.
Costume Party Gangsta is YOU’s fourth effort, following three other self-produced recordings released over the course of the year: his debut Felt Pen Sketch Book Vol. I (March 2014), Thievin’ for Steez (May 2014) and A Righteous Dude (July 2014) -all of which are available on YOU’s Bandcamp page. His first recordings have all been back to back, released within a few of months of each other, which demonstrates the sheer amount of music, inspiration and creativity that YOU has ready to unleash on the hip-hop world.
Listen to more of YOU’s music on Bandcamp.
