Although I’m not a betting man, I would put money on the presumption that quite a few of your favorite artists were taking notes from OnCue at one point or another.Īnyway, before I get too off track preaching my views on OnCue, let’s get down to business. And beyond the music, dude was certainly ahead of his time with the use of the Internet to spread his sounds. In that sense, OnCue may very well have been ahead of his time. The thing is, dude was cooking up beautifully balanced hip-hop crooning before that was the wave. In recent times, I’ve seen some slander directed at OnCue – people claiming the abundance of “sing rap” on his tracks is an attempt to ride that wave. In both 2016 ( You Knew All Along) and 2017 ( Perfectly Tragically Flawed), OnCue released projects that – in my admittedly biased opinion – belonged on various EotY lists. Possibly for this reason, I’ve found his music tends to be slept on. The CT-raised and NY-based OnCue has made it a habit of coming and going over the years, popping up with stellar sounds and then disappearing from the public’s eyes. So, perhaps needless to say now that I’ve gotten my personal story of connection to OnCue’s music out of the way, when I saw new music from Cuey show up on the timeline, I was beyond thrilled. And I can’t think of any project from any artist that has continuously received the level of playback over such an extensive period of time that Angry Young Man has.
As I began this piece, it hit me the project was released four years ago. In so many ways, AYM became – and has remained – a vital soundtrack to my life.
The album dropped just as I was getting out of a serious relationship, as my career path was changing unexpectedly and as I began taking the steps to quit drinking. While I’ve been a fan of every drop from Cuey, AYM has continued to be an album I’ve turned to whenever I needed to gain some perspective and find the inner strength to push forward on my own journey. From that moment on, I was hooked on whatever new music OnCue released.įast forward to the release of Angry Young Man, an album that truly fell into my life with the most divine timing. And the lyrical content was backed by the sounds of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In ways that I wasn’t used to, I felt an artist’s lyrics resonating and vibrating within my mental and emotional spaces. While I no longer dread what’s considered “mainstream”, I fondly recall stumbling across the timeless sonic clash that was Cueyfornication. And I very quickly found myself falling deeper down the rabbit hole, spending countless hours checking out whatever hip-hop I could find that was different from what I’d hear in the dreaded “mainstream”. Having just finished up my sophomore year of college, I was still an infant in my musical discovery – being away at school had opened the doors on this beautifully vast musical space known as the underground. I’ll never forget the first time I heard OnCue. For me, OnCue is one of only a handful of artists that have really played this role in my own life. While we may enjoy the catalogue they’ve released, their art has found a way to touch our souls and, in some cases, shape and/or save our lives. We all have those select artists that have done more than entertain us with their music. OnCue just released new music so please excuse me while I stan out real quick…
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