Murs For President

Soft-spoken, affable, and piercingly intelligent, Los Angeles based underground mainstay Murs has been humbly churning out great music since the late nineties and his output since 2003’s *End of the Beginning* has been uniformly excellent. Over the course of a host of solo albums and collaborative efforts with the likes of Slug from Atmosphere, The Living Legends, and members of the Def Jux stable, Murs has fashioned a charismatic and compulsively likable persona. His low-key intelligence and self-deprecatory indignation make him a curiously modest figure on a Hip-Hop scene filled with inflated egos and self-made millionaires. His latest release and first major label effort *Murs For President* finds him further developing this persona over a refreshingly unadorned album that will sound familiar to his long time fans, but that sports just enough gloss to appeal to a wider audience. The album features a handful of big budget guest appearances from the likes of Snoop Dogg and will.i.am but its strongest moments come on tunes like the piano and sleigh bell laden “Everything,” which finds Murs reflecting on the unexpected path his career has taken and the difficult choices he’s been forced to make along the way.

Thriving on basic honesty, everyday relatability, and plainspokenness, Murs is a true populist in a major-label hip-hop world of supernatural egos and personas.

It's odd to see a rapper like Murs, the Los Angeles indie-label favorite, on such a big label, especially this late in the major-label game. But despite the inclusion of "Time Is Now," which features a guest verse from Snoop Dogg, and some glossier production than usual here and there, Murs For President is pretty…

With a major-label contract on the line (not to mention that presumptive presidential nomination), Murs was obviously ready to put his best foot forward -- and yes, Murs for President is just as ambitious as the title indicates. With a parade of tracks -- message tracks, lovers tracks, just-hanging tracks, back-in-the-day tracks, treat-her-like-a-queen tracks, political-outrage tracks, comeback tracks (subtitled "Half a Million Dollars and 18 Months Later"), life-on-the-road tracks -- Murs apparently wants to be all things to all rap fans (not a bad quality in someone hungry for higher office).