If you look in the bottom right-hand corner of this infographic from SPIN’s recent “The Changing Face of Hip-Hop” issue, you’ll notice that the magazine places burgeoning, Raleigh rapper, King Mez in the “Working Class Rappers” branch of hip-hop’s “The New Underground.”
There’s no reason to believe that Mez would disagree with this categorization, and toward the end of the subcutaneous “Nightmares” track from his The King’s Khrysis EP—which was released earlier this year—he even makes it clear that he’s content with the toils of an aspiring hip-hop artist.
King Mez | Reign
The labor theme gets an update with “Reign”—a brand new, self-produced track, which may appear on Mez’s upcoming project, My Everlasting Zeal. Here, he addresses the work ethic, “Nothin’ that you’re distraught about would even phase me/ These instrumentals I chalk out/ You niggas lazy/ and I work like there’s no tomorrow/ If you think I’m leaving now, then you crazy.”
Mez’s royal desire to be his own kingdom was off the ground way before Jay and Kanye’s notion of the quintessential throne dictated every rapper’s goals. In fact, Mez isn’t even concerned with that particular throne. As he says in the chorus, “It ain’t gotta be the main one/ Long as don’t nobody livin’ got the same one,” meaning that he could care less about playing musical chairs with the rest of the rap world. He’ll sit on his ass, in his own damn chair, when his work is done.
