This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, and the University Musical Society.
On July 27, the Ann Arbor-based hip-hop artist Taylor Michael, who performs as Tru Klassick, will headline a show at
The Blind Pig to celebrate both his birthday and the release of his second full-length record, "The Halo Effect."
The album’s title is a play on first-person shooter video games like "Halo," which Michael grew up playing with friends; the idea of a victim caught in the crosshairs; and Michael’s own claim that he’s "smoking [other] rappers."
As a whole, Michael says, the "album is a little bit more cohesive" than his earlier work, which might have found him tracing ideas through individual songs, but not establishing a theme that runs the length of an entire album. From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Huey P. Newton and crack, "The Halo Effect" explores figures and moments that "impact[ed] Black culture throughout history," Michael says — particularly figures who were targeted in acts of violence, or moments that caused irreparable damage.
At the Pig this weekend, Michael says he will perform alongside "heavy hitters" like Noveliss, Hir-O, and Jon Connor, who performed on Dr. Dre’s 2015 album, "Compton."
"They bring some of their homies and I bring my homies," Michael says.
Michael has been making music since he was in high school, and he says his writing process has changed considerably since then. Sometimes, he says, "I'll know exactly what I want to say. And then there's other times I'll just let it take me where it goes. I'll just start writing."
Michael says he gets ideas for songs from all over the place: a conversation he's having, a book he’s reading, a movie he’s watching, a phrase he overhears.
"All it takes is for me to hear somebody say something a certain way and I can write a whole song," he says.
As an example, Michael mentions "
Last of the Real" (from his first full-length album, "The Mastah Chief") and an upcoming song from "The Halo Effect," "Mentally Ill." Both songs were inspired to a certain extent by Eminem’s "
Amityville." Michael says he heard "Amityville" and thought: "All right, let me take that and play with that whole rhyme scheme."
It was partly "a nod to Em," Michael says, but also a challenge for himself: "How can I say something in a rhyme [in a way] nobody else has said it?"
Growing up, Michael says he "was surrounded by music." He describes his mother as "a huge geek of music" who kept "tons of tapes and records and CDs" around the house, which meant his life "always had a soundtrack."
Once Michael got into hip-hop, he found he already knew a lot of the music he thought would be new to him, since so many of the tracks being sampled seemed to come directly from his mom’s record collection.
"I’d recognize half the songs that would come out," Michael says.
He "always liked experimental music," especially "the blending of genres" to produce something that couldn’t really be categorized as one thing or another.
Michael describes his own sound as "classic, timeless, soulful, [and] jazzy." As for his style, he says he’s "just narrowed it down and sharpened up the craft a little bit more."
But Michael’s also found himself thinking more and more about thinking itself — the nature of perception, the mechanics of consciousness. It’s an idea he explored on "
Einstein on Acid" (from "The Mastah Chief"), among other tracks.
"That's the biggest mystery, right?" he says. "The tool that we use to experience the world, we understand the least."
Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.
All photos by Doug Coombe.
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