music / Hip-Hop
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Watch STIX Shine A Light On One Of L.A.’s Most Overlooked Neighborhoods

Hustle global, rap local.

August 22, 2017

While the country continues to work through a rough period of racial tension, music once again proves to be the common denominator giving everybody insight into what's really going on in the world. In the past, legends like NWA and Public Enemy handled this role, telling gritty stories of the street and giving listeners first-hand accounts of drug dealers on one corner, and police brutality on the next.

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Today? Well, some things change, and some things stay the same. On a new collaborative project from Tanqueray and The FADER, lifelong Watts resident STIX opens up a can of reality rap and sheds light on one of Los Angeles's least talked about neighborhoods, backed up by A-list production from Charlie Heat, Zaytoven, and Nocc. As STIX tells it, "Compton, holding it down, Long Beach, Inglewood killing it, but there's one city that's always omitted. I gotta change that. I'm doing this for Watts."

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On the project's lead video for "Pretend/Blueline Freestyle", we see just how real things can get in Watts. STIX takes us past the sunshine of California and into the darkness of Southern L.A. for a lesson in posers versus real ones.

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Watch STIX Shine A Light On One Of L.A.’s Most Overlooked Neighborhoods