By TJ Love
A lot of artists wear their faith on their sleeve. Unfortunately the majority have difficulty doing so without coming across as sanctimonious assholes. Binghamton, NY based producer/emcee Idssa Tariq is an exception to this maxim, an exemplary one at that. “Trying to Get By” is Tariq baring his soul with excruciatingly honest confessions and a treatise on American life from the perspective of a Muslim born and bred here. Over a soulful self-produced head-nodder driven by thumping, high hat, and a harmonic dynamic between trumpets and wistful background crooning, Idasa Tariq explains why he’s thankful for life and still trying to get right. His opening 16 bars is the type unflinching sincerity you don’t hear many emcees exhibit on a record.
“I remember high school, it tried to take my soul/popularity driven and it almost ate me whole/a bunch of fake friends tellin’ bacon salami jokes/growin’ up bitter still tryin’ not to hate these folks/livin’ in the 607 my head’s resting wondering if all my living sins equal dead blessings/a high junkie who’s childhood was Islamic/was tryna find God through pill bottles and chronic”
Riq goes on giving his take on the plight of the youth today, the vagaries of infidelity in relationships, and in the final stanza big ups his mom and pops for instilling the moral foundation, that while tested at times, he’s managed to maintain into adulthood. “Trying to Get By” isn’t sugarcoating anything with disingenuous religious dogma in the guise of rhyme. Idasa Tariq proffers life lessons that are far from those by some hypocrite in the pulpit. He’s actually lived through the topical matter he addresses and that reality alone is reason enough to digest his words with an open mind. Peep “Trying to Get By”
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