I have to be completely honest: it’s been a while since I’ve covered New Jersey Hip-Hop. Actually, it’s been a while since I’ve covered hip-hop, period. I know that people know my long and storied history with hip-hop in general — and New Jersey Hip-Hop, in particular — and they also know that I haven’t written about it in a long while.

So, for me to come out of hiding and write about it — after all these years of not doing so — it must be a pretty big deal.

New Jersey Hip-Hop

Fortunately, LVNDVN is talented enough to make me end my long hiatus of covering New Jersey Hip-Hop and give him a stand-alone feature of his own.

I think what most people fail to understand about New Jersey Hip-Hop, in particular, and hip-hop in general, is that, once you get over being outraged over the explicitness of the lyrics, you realize that they are telling a true story. Yes, it’s about street life. No, it isn’t pretty.

But that is the point.

Real hip-hop isn’t supposed to be pretty. The tales from the streets are not all sunshine and rainbows. If you want to hear feel-good pop songs, you can sing along with the kiddies to while in the mini-van driving to Six Flags, download a copy of Taylor Swift’s 1989 from iTunes.

But, if you want to hear a real tale from the dark side of life, find yourself a real hip-hop track (just make sure you drop the kids off at Grandma’s first).

Anyway, that brings us to LVNDVN. This is a New Jersey hip-hop star who’s got more than 140,000 listens on Soundcloud, and there’s a very good reason why.

He’s also got over 80k listens on Spotify. Again, it’s for a reason.

And, of all the tracks I’ve heard from this rising New Jersey hip-hop superstar, my favorite has to be “Dragon”, which is straight up lyrical ether.

Check it out below, and let me know what you think!