Who’s Anthem?

By Lewis Corson | October 23, 2009 at 11:33 pm | Arts & Culture, News | 6 comments | |

The legendary Party Inform, sent out and received on most Thursday afternoons, mentioned yesterday that there was going to be an opening act for Cool Kids. Billed as an “NYC Hip Hop Artist,” running under the pseudonym Anthem, one can’t help but wonder who this young man is and what he might bring to the table prior to Cool Kids taking the stage. From what I have gathered thus far, Anthem a.k.a. “Ant” would astound most at CMC in that he decided to go against the grain, drop his professional life as an investment banker and pursue the dream of becoming a hip-hop sensation.  According to his self-penned bio:

Anthem (a.k.a. Ant) is a 24-year old Manhattan (NYC)-based emcee whose single(s) “Bachelor’s Theme” (and “Call Me Anthem”) have been building considerable buzz on the club scene and online.  Ant grew up in Northern Virginia and went on to attend Duke University.  After graduating from Duke, Ant headed to New York to embark on a career as a trader a top tier investment bank.  Despite enjoying the competitive intensity and high stakes nature of trading, Ant never lost his passion for rhyme and felt increasingly torn between the security and stability that a Wall St. career afforded his family and the opportunity of pursuing his dreams and making a name for himself in the hip hop world.  Ultimately his dreams won out;  and the rest, as they say, is history.  Outside of living in the studio while putting the finishing touches on his first release “Anticipation,” Ant is currently touring and doing shows at live venues in NYC and throughout the US.

Anthem has a handful of studio tracks on his MySpace and all of them feature his knack for lyrical creativity. A versatile rapper, Anthem manages to cover his whole bio, from dropping the Wall Street paycheck to pursue his dream on “Home” and “One Life” to silly drunkenness on the “I Gotta Feeling” Remix. He moves from verse to verse and from subject to subject over any beat that is on in the studio with nonchalance. That effortless quality is known by hip hop snobs as flow and many believe that without it, a rapper won’t stand a chance in the music business. We find Anthem at his best in “More,” a track that sounds like an all-out “off-the-top” freestyle and samples Bob Marley’s “Concrete Jungle.”

Van Gundy’s mad at my magic/ Cut from a different cloth, fathom my fabric/ Boy meets world like a n***a been savage/ Ravaging you wack emcees that spit average/ God damn my boast of having a classic feel/ Sh*t is bananas and you slipping in my mass appeal.

The ten tracks are averaging about 4,500 plays each on his MySpace page, a good number for up-and-coming rappers.

You can follow anthem on twitter @iamanthem and listen on his website www.iamanthem.com.

Here are a couple downloadable tracks for your pregaming tomorrow afternoon:

Anthem – Bachelor’s Theme

Anthem – Home

Anthem – I Gotta Feeling (Remix)

Anthem will be performing tomorrow, October 23, at 4:30 PM on Parents Field (south of North Quad).