I, like a lot of people seem to, sort of have a love/hate relationship with the HBO series “How To Make It In America.” I wanted to love it, so bad, but I found the writing and the storylines to be a little “meh,” so I can only say that I “like” it at this point. However, I thought it was beautifully shot, and I was able to identify greatly with a lot of the show’s characters. But more than anything, it always, always, featured really good music.
So it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise that the newly released teaser for season two of the show features a kick-as$ new song, “I Stand Alone,” by an artist generating a lot of buzz right now — Theophilus London.
Who’s Theophilus London, besides a guy with a name better than yours, you ask? Here’s how the Village Voice describes him…
Yes, right from the beginning, I realized that there’s no one in hip-hop quite like Theophilus London. He’s an actual outsider.
He seemed like a star on a tiny stage, crazy for someone whose first album won’t be out for another month. He bigged-up Bed-Stuy, but then he shouted out Paris, saying that he was on his way there after the show. (His MTV debut, dropping Monday, inspired him to say, “New York, we in our prime! We in our fuckin’ prime right now!” to applause and white-girl woos.) Introducing “I Stand Alone,” he was brazen: “This is the theme to a certain HBO show you may know. So it’s gonna be super huge, haha.”
His music is a hybrid of Kid Cudi melodies and Tom Tom Club breakbeats that sounds like the radio dial got stuck between stations while driving around Grand Theft Auto’s Vice City; it is a stop on the Being John Malkovich elevator. Moving around onstage, he’s at times Mick Jagger, all wrists and hips; others, he’s prowling like Eazy E, his shoulders doing the walking.
Respect. Here, get to know him better…
