22 Feb 18: Song of the Day

Song: The Alphabet

Artist: Luke Christopher

Album (Year): The Wonder Years Pt. 1 (2013)

Notable Lyric: "Earth, wind, and fire type elemental peace // That resembles me and here accounts for L-M-N-O-P"

Since 2014 Luke Christopher has been an absolute favourite artist of mine! One of the most talented and creative artists I've come across and will never run out of praise for him.

This song, The Alphabet, comes off his 2013 mixtape The Wonder Years which he released when he was 20. Twenty! It's easy to be that good when you've got quality producers and song-writers around you but Luke writes, produces and performs a lot of his own music.

This is just one of the many songs that will appear on SOTD. He does an incredible job of sampling and editing songs in order to create his notable and contagious up-beat songs. This is a common trend among his earlier music and his more recent work displays his versatility of being able to comfortably transition between flows and even genres.

In his song Life Jackets he almost shows off how good he is at switching from rapping to singing and back. I've not come across many artists who can sing as well as they can rap - and rap well. I don't think people really appreciate how difficult it is to, firstly, keep a flow on a beat, and sing the chorus on top of that. This is one reason I highly rate Luke Christopher.

"A is to Attempt to B the Change you want to C"

I haven't even got to the lyrics of the song, which is a piece of art within itself. It's rather Blackalicious' Alphabet Aerobic-esque. You have a lot of fun going through the song on Rap Genius whe

re Luke has verified some of the annotations. The change of actually using words that begin with those letters and using the word play on the homonyms is inexplicably satisfying as he progresses through the verses. It's impressive enough to do it on a single verse so to do it twice adds credibility to the talent he had at that age.

And of course, the positive message of the song of chasing your dreams, working hard, not giving up, embracing the challenges and remaining humble during success is one that everyone can relate to!

"X-pect to fail, Y cease to dream - even if you ain't catching them Zs"