Adding onto what has been string of steady positives, talented Brooklyn rap artist Young M.A. has released a single and video called “Summer Story,” with lyrics laying out all that is special about summer in New York City (and it is special). The song follows the enormously successful “OOOUUU,” a dreamy (yet still hard) summer 2016 street sing-along fave that samples the famous “Oo, killer” Terio Vines (which DJ Funk Flex repeatedly dropped during his take down of Drake over the weekend).
As is made clear in her lyrics, the 23-year-old Young M.A. aka “Me Always” is unabashedly out, and has spoken publicly about the challenges of being gay within a music community that has been know for its homophobia. While she’s clearly a trailblazer, she has said she doesn’t dwell on her sexuality in part because it’s a status she’s struggled with throughout her life and she prefers to focus on the love, which she says she’s been on the receiving end of a lot of (including ours).
Known for her unrelentingly on point, smooth flow (something of a minimum requirement for any female rapper wishing to enter the game though even given that hers is above average), Young M.A.’s wave first began to build with the release two summers ago of the menacing-sounding “Chiraq,” a freestyle hard-biting enough that it grabbed the attention of Dr. Boyce Watkins, who commented on Facebook that her bars in the video were “sad” and sounded like they had been written by a “serial killer,” a critique–surprise, surprise–that propelled interest in the video through the roof and led to over five million YouTube views.
In November of last year, she released the mixtape, “Sleepwalkin,'” consisting of freestyles and originals songs now boasting over 50,000 streams on Dat Piff. Young M.A. has been performing throughout the summer and has said she will release an album sometime in 2016.
