You ever go to the store and buy a new pair of sneakers. You love them so much that you walk out of the store with them on? That’s how I feel about these artists on the rise. You hear about them while they’re still fresh. While they still have that hunger to make it in them. You enjoy their music for what it is. The sound is great, amazing even. They are your new pair of shoes. Then something happens. You begin to see their celebrity rise and the content of their artistry changes. They become more cookie cutter and generic. They are just like your once new shoes, old and worn out. They may even have a scuff too many. You are officially over them. You are over it. Well ladies and gentlemen, that is what happened to me…again. This time the culprit is Theophilus London.
Being introduced to him at the tender age of 20 I was hooked. He had this mixtape delightfully called This Charming Mixtape. Charming it was. With a great song he mixed using Whitney Houstons famous track I Will Always Love You. Genius. The whole electro-pop rapper thing worked for me and definitely worked for him. I knew he’d make it. Just didn’t know I would feel so alienated. I say this after recently attending a concert at Le Trianon in Paris. I’ve seen him perform before and it was great. Good energy and love felt from him and the crowd.
Now it seems as though he is straying to be more like Asap Rocky. I guess he’s trying to keep his place in Paris’ heart. I say this because Asap Rocky is slowly taking over his favorite city. Either way the concert was missing something. It didn’t have that quirky artist present. He wasn’t dressed like a preppy Amish black guy. Not even trying to have that cool he so easily did in the beginning. Instead it was a drunken mess dancing around the stage with no T-Shirt on. Not only this, Theo was crowd surfing. Nothing against it, but it just didn’t seem authentic to his character. Theophilus has lost his classiness. Bye bye Mr. Charming.