Akira The Don

If you dub yourself the, um, rap Morrissey, you deserve attention. If you walk around with a mustache lifted from Dali or the Kaiser and a shaggy lion’s mane, well, you crave attention. If your brit hop has a unique sound, damn it, you demand attention!

I bumped into Welsh hip hop artist Akira The Don’s site around a year or so ago in the midst of a post-iPod-acquisition downloading frenzy. Because he had free samples of his music available, I gave him a whirl, naturally. I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy his work immensely. Even better, he regularly updated both his blog and his music page. By the time his debut was released I was pump-primed to purchase When We Were Young. (Note to the Big Music companies. Most of us want to actually buy the music! We simply like to know what we plan on spending our hard-earned ducats on and we can’t carry MySpace with us!)

As an aside, The Don was apparently dropped by Interscope after concerns about the content of “Thanks For All The AIDS” on the debut. If true, we can’t accuse Interscope of having a spine. Their loss and Something In Construction’s gain.

If you’re interested in hip hop that comes at you from a different angle and has a message without being overly bludgeoning, be sure to give Akira The Don a test drive. The man is creative and different, exactly what you expect from the underground. For those that like to sample before purchasing, here are a few of The Don’s older tracks I enjoy the most.

   Akira The Don - Dreams (ft Nasty and Swiss)
   Akira The Don - Gitmo! (ft Narsty)
   Akira The Don - Living In The Future

If you like what you hear, you can catch more on The Don’s MySpace page. And you can read about his adventures on his blog, as well as downloading some of the mix-tapes still available. Akira, you need to make more available!