The Wake

Toki Wright has been a presence in the Minnesota hip-hop world for some time. As a rapper, he’s performed all over the country and overseas, toured with Brother Ali, appeared on Atmosphere’s crew cut Crewed Up, hosted numerous hip-hop events and rocked mics as a solo artist and with groups The C.O.R.E., Aphrill and The Chosen Few. After steadily releasing material on his Low Budget High Quality series, Wright is gearing up for the release of his official debut album, A Different Mirror. I caught up with Toki to talk about the album.

“The whole concept with A Different Mirror is if I stand in a mirror, I look at myself one way, and someone standing even an inch to the left or right of me is going to see me differently, they’re gonna have a different perspective,” said Wright. One song from the album has already been leaked on Wright’s website, the political banger “State of Emergency,” a response to our years under President Bush. “I think that Bush has done enough to warrant plenty of responses,” said Wright of the song. “The song was written about the political climate. The world is in a guessing game of where its gonna go. It’s the whole question of ethics, and being ethical people,” The song opens with a quote from Dubya himself, and Toki subsequently responds with his powerful, confrontational flow. “Bush’s relevence will be here for a long time, but him in office, his sentence, our sentence, is up… Now its time to start talkin about moving forward.”

Toki Wright’s raps express little tolerance for injustice. The energetic MC’s community activism, like his work with YO! The Movement, can’t be denied, but he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed. “Sometimes I get typecast just as this community person, which I am, but I’ve done a lot on the music and artist front that I need to shine light on all the things I’ve done musically,” says Wright. “Doing work in my community is natural. That’s what I have to do. I have no choice but to do it. I think I spread myself thin sometimes, trying to be everything for everybody. If I can just make great music first, that’s my truest passion.”

A Different Mirror, set to drop within a few months, features songs about the stigma that faces single fathers, navigating relationships with women, violence in the community, older men with younger women. As Wright says, it’s “just a whole lotta rap.” The album features a number of guests, including I Self Divine, P.O.S., Carnage, Brother Ali, and Phillipe from Los Nativos, plus Benzilla, PC, Medium Zach of Big Quarters, Reg E Reg of The C.O.R.E., and Doomtree’s Lazerbeak on the beats; but Toki stresses this album is an individual expression. “I have some things I wanna say for myself, and I have to stand on my own two feet.”
Mostly, the album reflects Toki Wright’s love for making music: “I like to rap, I like to be rowdy and jump around, be excited. I want my music to affect people, I want people to think it’s worthwhile.”

Toki Wright plays at the Dinkytowner December 27th.