Two-thirds Done Written by Steve Darko January 20, 2014 Gatorade bottles and Reeces Peanut Butter Cups fill half the room, while an unshaven Antonio Smith, better than known as Rev Tony, fill the other half, along with his sound engineer and a select few members of his team. In the Without An Umbrella camp this is a momentous occasion because Tony has just completed the second of three albums he will be releasing this year. As a journalist, with an exclusive all-access pass to Without An Umbrella events, I have been afforded an opportunity to hear a few tracks from both completed albums and they are defiantly different than anything that was heard from his award winning and nominated God In My iPod series. With Separation and Be You Be Different, Tony has somehow create a brand of music that dangerously defies Christian music, yet is somehow completely Christian. If you know anything about Tony, the business man, he is all about creating his own brand and making his own rules to glorify God. Together, these two albums are the most transparent bodies of work that has ever been recorded by any Christian artist I have ever heard. Sometimes I feel as if I am listening Eminem, Jay-Z, or Joe Budden, which happened to be his favorite three rappers. There are songs in which he doubts his calling to be a Baptist pastor, while others shed a horrible light on how hard it is to be a pastor of any denomination. Then there are love songs, if you can even call them that, that are so emotional they borderline low self esteem and mental illnesses. By far, if these songs are of any inclination of how the album has been woven together, then we may very well have some Grammy nominated albums by Rev Tony during the next award season. In short, Tony is making music of his own brand, as if he has something to prove; and may be he does. He has been musically silent for two years.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 01:52:49 +0000
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