6LACK (pronounced black, not six-lack, as is commonly joked), burst onto the alternative R&B scene with one of the best debut projects I’ve personally ever heard, especially from a sing-rapper who was establishing a name for himself. FREE 6LACK featured, quite prominently, a song that used the instrumental from Future’s Perkys Calling, called Ex Calling. This cleverly came last in a tracklist of songs that still work on me to this day, seven years later. Standout songs include PRBLMS, Loving U, and the aforementioned reprisal.
6LACK sing-raps with a melodic, cigarette-stained, nonchalant flow. He’s truly unique in this respect, no one that I know of has been able to recreate his mix of rhythm, melody, and lyricism. Another unique aspect to 6LACK’s music is his perspective. After FREE 6LACK, the tone changes dramatically, and gets far more focused. That’s not unusual, most artists develop a stronger ability to write a cohesive project as they go along. FREE 6LACK had some disparate ideas, from the I-don’t-need-this attitude of PRBLMs to the old-couple-on-the-porch laid back vibe of Gettin’ Old. That track fades into a song wherein 6LACK claims he has “the worst luck with love,” and on the last track, he gets into what seems to be his mission statement.
I understand y’all got your vision and y’all got your formula but that shit don’t work for me, man. I’m not gonna conform, like, I’m not settling for that shit. ‘Cause if I do it once and it pop, I’ma have to keep doing that shit over and over again. You can’t build no fanbase like that! You…you become, you become, you become a fuckin’ song instead of a person. That shit…I’m not…I’m not tryna be that man.
6LACK on Alone / EA6
He had to fight for that vision, too. You can read an interview with GQ from 2017 here, where he describes the experience of making FREE 6LACK and climbing to fame. In 2015, he was living out of a ripped backpack on the streets of Miami, and even in that condition decided to tell the label to fuck off. He soon after cliqued up with Spillage Village, a collective that included the likes of other future stars J.I.D and Earthgang.
It takes nerve to say no to that security. It takes the belief in yourself that can’t be shaken. The kind of chutzpa to say that just because the people don’t see it now, doesn’t mean they won’t later. Sometimes you have to just sit in on sessions. His tweets from that year before he blew up are full of this kind of self-affirmation and understanding that progress is not linear. Here’s a tweet from just three months before the debut of his breakout project, when he had two singles to his name.
Proof of Concept
FREE 6LACK went to number one on Apple’s hip-hop page the day it came out. He had promoted the release with a viral video of himself rapping next to a 700-lb bear. An actual living bear, that would also be seen on the cover of this tape. The deluxe saw a song with a T-Pain feature. People who were in the know knew about 6LACK, and soon he was a sensation. I was in my junior year of college at the time, and deeply into the hip-hop underground. I’d known about 6LACK from the minute FREE 6LACK hit digital shelves. PRBLMS and Ex Calling were added to my party playlists, and they always did the trick. There’s no better feeling than being on aux, playing something new, and people are nodding their heads and asking “okay, who is THIS?”
My friend Philip and I would trade music recommendations all the time. Any time we agreed on something, it was more or less a sure bet. We also were the first among any of our friends to promote J.I.D’s work, and you could count on us to get the thing going. We even had a collab playlist that our friends all subscribed to.
Suffice it to say, after just one project, 6LACK had arrived for me. I was locked into anything that this guy would put out until he missed a few in a row. And friends, he ain’t missed yet.
East Atlanta Love Letter, Focus, and Timing
The singles leading up to EALL blew me away, and the second came at a time when I was especially susceptible to heartfelt alternative R&B. I’d graduate college, been through a breakup, and was getting ready to move across the country. The move across the country was the reason for said breakup, and it was hard for me to get through. The worst part was that we had legitimate love for each other, and we broke up to save ourselves the pain of slowly growing apart.
EALL came out in September of 2018, and I moved away from home for good in October of 2018. This album was part of the soundtrack as I crammed my Hyundai Sonata with everything I owned and set out to make something of myself. It still stands out to me as one of the most impactful albums of my life, both because of when it came out and the content within. It’s my favorite album of this genre, narrowly beating out Frank Ocean’s Blonde. I understand that may not be a popular opinion, but I’m well aware of my contrarian streak.
East Atlanta Love Letter is a focused, love-filled album. The ideas all work together in concert, and each song is dynamic and different from the last. The title track features Future’s rich basso autocrooning, accompanying 6LACK on parts of his verses, the chorus, and dropping off a pearl of a verse himself where even Future stays on message. The duo singing “who gon’ love better, nobody because I say so, and my words hit like a Draco” would sound contrived, if it wasn’t backed up by the rest of the album. J. Cole laid one of the best verses of his career (in my opinion) on Pretty Little Fears, a song about loving someone in spite of their flaws and ignoring the past in favor of the future you could share. To that end, the album also has potent features from Offset and Khalid.
The overall message hits home for me. Love is complicated and rarely a straight path. But if you have someone that you can stick around and grow with, it will work out. Here’s an excerpt from Pretty Little Fears:
I’m loving your light, vulnerable
Letting your guard down, it’s honorable
‘Specially when the past ain’t been that
Friendly to you, but there’s magic in that…
Due to my past transgressions, you believed in me
J. Cole on Pretty Little Fears
I guess the light I see in you is what you see in me, Lord
The Love Renaissance
Love Renaissance (stylized LVRN) is a label and management group out of Atlanta. They signed 6LACK in 2016, and he has released each of his projects under their umbrella. Their other signed artists have included Summer Walker and Raury (no longer w the label after 2018), and they manage other rising stars like dvsn, Westside Boogie, and Shelley FKA DRAM.
To me, 6LACK is by far the best example of what I’d consider a love renaissance. His music speaks to a deeper kind of love, and I feel like I’ve gone on a journey alongside him as I’ve grown in my own life and capacity for love. A far cry from club anthems about forgettable, regrettable relationships, he tells stories about that person you want to be with at the end of every night, and the beginning of every day. This kind of love is best encapsulated in the last track on East Atlanta Love Letter, titled the very antithesis of this website, Stan. The song describes the rules for his love.
Say you’ll always be my greatest fan
Sing your favorite words just like a band
Only if you’ll love me like a stan, stan, stan, aw, man
From EALL to today, I’ve reconnected with the love I lost, and we’ve gotten engaged. We’ve fought through the difficulties of swallowing our pride and figuring out how we can be better together, both as individuals and as a partnership. We’ve both taken leaps of faith in our careers and in this relationship, and we’ve figured it out at each step. It’s truly special to be someone’s biggest fan, and to have them be yours. 6LACK’s music is the closest I’ve come to seeing true love explained through this medium, and I’m excited to see what comes next.
As always, it’s best to let the artist speak for themselves. Here are the closing words to East Atlanta Love Letter:
People go through life not knowing
6LACK on Stan
Not knowing what love is
People go through life not showing
Not showing what love is
I mean
It’s like you think you know, but you don’t really know
Then you find out, woah
You gotta learn things slow
But one thing I know
One thing I know
You, you got
You got all my love
6LACK has a new album coming March 24, 2023. It’s titled Since I Have a Lover. There are two lead singles out, the title track and Talkback. You can pre-order/pre-save it here.
Anti-Standom 