It truly succeeds because once Davo gets into a pocket, pulling you into the complexities of his brain, the fact that the track was originally a smash hit by Eminem becomes secondary, or completely irrelevant. All the rambling gets a periodical break whenever he says, "I just be," in a way, breaking the story down into chapters. "I Just Be" goes from Davo questioning the friends around him, to people thinking he was soft for singing in his tracks, not being able to help his stressed-out little sister, to the fucked up prison system and his penthouse dreams. The stakes for that remake were arguably low considering the original is already a feel-good, party track but deep into Davo’s Underrated 3.0 tape lies “I Just Be”, an epic tale of everything Davo-related over Eminem's "Cleanin' Out My Closet." When the beat dropped on my first listen, there was this "What the fuck?" moment where I questioned why anyone would try rapping over this in 2015 but Davo took the opportunity to spill out everything brewing inside.
President Davo made his name in Baltimore for jacking beats last summer when he dropped his own version of Big Pun’s “I Don’t Wanna Be A Player”, which became a local hit and has racked up over 2 million views on YouTube.
"Bank Rolls" is far from a politically conscious track but its rise to becoming a national hit simultaneously grew with Baltimore's uprising against police injustice and brutality, making its shouting out of different neighborhoods and streets throughout Baltimore City, simple production and accompanying dances more unifying that Tate may have intended it to be. Following a tradition he's developed over the past two years to drop music in honor of his late mother's birthday, Tate dropped a remake of Tim Trees' Rod Lee-produced "Bank Rolls", a Baltimore hit in the early 2000's that never grew beyond the city. Coincidentally, Kobang's mom was born on April 19th, the same day Freddie Gray died from complications related to his arrest by the Baltimore City Police Department. He went back to the drawing board and revisited his roots this year, though. He's actively been dropping tapes over the past couple years - some stuck and some didn't. Released in 2016, his 12th album, #MYNAMEISJOETHOMAS, is another classy affair that shows any wannabe player how it should be done.Tate Kobang is not a new rapper in Baltimore. His pop crossover arrived when he joined Mariah Carey on 1999’s “Thank God I Found You.” And while the albums that followed included collaborations with Nas and G-Unit, he’d continually find ways to soften harder edges of his music’s hip-hop elements with a performing style more rooted in the soul and gospel music on which he was raised.
Hits like “All the Things (Your Man Won’t Do)” and “Don’t Wanna Be a Player” established Joe as a hip-hop-era successor to ‘70s balladeers like Teddy Pendergrass and Barry White. That was immediately clear to listeners when Joe-born Joseph Lewis Thomas in Georgia in 1973-released his first album, Everything, in 1992. With his sultry, silky style and ability to smoothly shift between yearning vulnerability and seductive swagger, the R&B vocalist always comes across like a player with highly exceptional skills. While Joe may sound sincere when he sings the title of his 1997 hit “Don’t Wanna Be a Player,” any suggestion the singer was giving up on love games was bound to be premature.