Last year wasn’t easy on anyone in the music industry, but if you’re in the rap community, you know that hip-hop was one of the hardest-hit genres in all of pop. The lifeblood of the hip-hop scene exists in the small-scale clubs where mixtapes have been traded and artists discovered for the very first time, but the lack of major touring hasn’t prevented rapper Vikki Sota from getting something started online and on speakers across the country in 2021 with songs like “Run up my Bands” and “Swimming.” He’s a force to be reckoned with, and if given the means to record, he’ll give you something to take you beyond the nightclub vibe.
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Sota is quite different from his peers in several ways, but the most prominent among them has got to be his lack of interest in producing lyric-centric content. He’s got so much to share with us in his music that limiting his communication to the poetic side of a song is pointless; hence why the mixing in his first pair of singles was tight enough to spotlight just about every important nook and cranny of the arrangement. This is no scrub songcraft – it’s made to impress.
Each of the two tracks that I’ve listened to by Vikki Sota feels larger than life because of their beats and the magnetizing voice they frame, and I think that an extended play like his upcoming project Genesis has the chance to bring his discography more cohesion than it’s currently supporting. He’s got a lot of different ways he can become a rap superstar, and from what I’ve seen he hasn’t even begun to explore his stylistic whims to the extent that a true professional needs to. There’s time, but getting on it soon would be recommended.
If Sota decides to do anything major with his sound, I think it should revolve around experimenting with trap beats and what they can do to complement the melodicism he does invite into the master mix of any given song he records. This is one rapper who shouldn’t be afraid of trying some crossover stuff, no matter what the critical consensus becomes because if he chooses something more puritanical and straightforward by design, it’s hard for me to tell whether or not he’ll be able to hold onto the momentum that he has right now, entering 2022 with the level of cred he’s got thus far.
I won’t be surprised at all to see Vikki Sota’s brand ascend to internationally recognized levels in the future, but right now I think his main concern should be creative development and making sure his rapping stays as tight and impressive as it is in “Swimming” and “Run up my Bands.” Sota doesn’t sound like a poser because he isn’t one, and whether he’s employing some synth part to make a point or just relying on the potency of his vocals as it is when there’s nothing else behind him in the mix, you’re sure to find whatever he’s making contemporarily quite the stirring prospect.
Jamie Morse