Last Saturday I was spending a little time in the a.m. poking around Facebook when I received a chat message from one of my so-called "friends." I tend to believe the old adage that you can count your real friends on one hand, but in the virtual world anything goes, especially if you're using your favorite social network(s) as a promotional tool. That said, I still spend a few seconds pondering friend requests and don't just add anyone who asks. In other words, I'm not a virtual cheap date that will say yes to anyone.
The "friend" who contacted me via FB chat is named Allen Forrest. At first, I wasn't sure who he was. I don't consider myself a rude jerk, but I did initially consider ignoring him before I responded to his initial salutation and starting chatting with him. Turns out he's an independent hip-hop artist who records under the name Matchstik. He sent me some links and I clicked through. The dude is working it on seemingly every angle. He had the ringtones thing going, an iLike page, and video clips on YouTube. The video clip that initially hooked me featured Match celebrating hearing his track, "Made It 2 The Top," on Yahoo!'s radio player for the first time. He was so stoked when he first heard it, he put the player on pause so he could roll video and share it with his friends. It's the modern equivalent of a new artist hearing their single on the car radio for the first time, only that rarely happens any more since commercial terrestrial radio seems to rarely break new artist these days. Check out the clip below.
After that, I checked out Matchstik's iLike page and came across the track "Bubble Bootie." As the title suggests, the song is part of the long line of fine tracks dedicated to women's backsides that includes the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "The Bertha Butt Boogie," Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls," Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," and the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps." I won't go so far to say that Match's song is as good as any of those aforementioned tracks, but it is pretty dang catchy and I dare you to listen to it without cracking a smile. Check it out below and if you like it, feel free to right click and hit "save as" to add it to your digital music collection.
Initially, I was hesitant to write about Matchstik, at least partially for the fear that I'll be inundated with unsigned artists trying to hit me up for some exposure. But Match has too much going on to be ignored. I'm not sure if he'll be the next big thing, but for now, he's got my attention.
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