BeanTown's Favorite Cousin: Why Cousin Stizz Will Reign In 2017
Written by Waylon O'Day
Cousin Stizz broke onto the scene in 2015 with the release of his debut tape, Suffolk County, creating him an enormous amount of buzz, despite being from a city that isn’t known for their hip-hop scene. The past year he dropped MONDA, a tape dedicated to his friend who died of cancer, and garnered, even more, buzz.
The January release of the single “Living Like Khaled” has made Stizz’s intentions for 2017 obvious; he’s ready to use the buzz he has built around himself and his city and take it nationwide.
Stizz appears on the surface to be just like any other rapper, he raps about his city, smoking weed, and women; but if you delve deeper it’s not hard to realize that Stizz is actually a complex artist.
He constantly reflects on how he came up, and who he came up with, but it’s in a way that almost anyone can identify with, his struggles are like those of a lot of people, and his ability to convey them is superb. This can be attributed to way he delivers his rhymes, similar to friend’s freestyling during a smoke session, which is where he honed his skills.
When you listen to just about any of his songs, it feels this way, even the more hyped up tracks; it creates this feeling that he’s sitting with you passing around the blunt and spitting in between puffs. It almost makes one reminisce on the days when Wiz Khalifa was still a relatively unknown from a city that up until that point had little to add to the hip-hop culture.
In a day and age where MCs are taking the easy way out by mumbling over tracks, Stizz speaks loud and clear, and has real bars too. He isn’t just some Soundcloud lurker, he’s has nearly 70k followers, and over a million plays on several tracks, including features on tracks with D.R.A.M and Denzel Curry. If there is anybody you shouldn’t sleep on it’s this guy, he is going to be making some major moves.
Stream his album, Monda below and follow him here.