Moose Biggz still hustling hard and smart with new hip-hop single “Hustle Harder” and its EP
By Kurt Beyers
With “Hustle Harder, Pt. 2,” and its EP, Lucid Dreams, Texas hip-hop artist Moose Biggz is making a statement and at the same time opening the “latest chapter” in his music career.
The single, its video and the album drop on August 16.
It is a song first released on his EP Love Ballads 4 a G, but in this remix, it is expanded with features by artists S.U.C. Captain, LGND, Don Ke, Neka Nesha and Maine 1.
“‘Hustle Harder’ is kind of self-explanatory,” said Moose, citing a couple lines from the chorus.
Hustle harder, hustle little smarter
Me and my niggas that was starvin’
Trying to get this money every day
Momma raised me off fixed income
“It talks about the struggles of traditional urban youth, sometimes coming from broken homes, broken families, doing what they have to do to survive, be it legal or illegal.”
Raised up food stamps, raised in the hood
Got me up to no good
“As the saying goes, ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it.’ You can still do things with dignity, even sometimes if you’re not standing correct morally. Obviously, you want to be in alignment with both, but, yeah, hustle harder, hustle a little smarter.”
“Hustle Harder, Pt. 2” is a hip-hop anthem, with the rap backgrounded by melodies and beats that are, by turns, militaristic, R&B and hip-hop.
Moose’s smarter hustle included a degree from the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, an hour’s drive from Bryan-College Station, where he was born and raised.
He describes an upbringing in an underprivileged, under-financed household in the ’hood, where lighting was sometimes candles, water for baths was heated on the kitchen stove and, when the gas was off, cooking food over a lantern.
“We lived in a shotgun house at one point in time. When it rains the roof caves in on you — literally, the insulation and the sheet rock is falling on you. You’re enmeshed in poverty.”
And sometimes, he said, that upbringing leads desperate people to selling drugs and committing violence, and sometimes it leads people to say, “I want to do my best and be an honor roll student and get out of here.”
Hustle harder, hustle a little smarter.
“That was my story right there. I was an honor roll student, but I did hustle and did what I had to do. So, I was a little bit of all, you know?”
He was in corporate for a while out of college, went to the oilfield for several years, where he lost his taste for 9-to-5 office work, now has a day career that is two weeks on, two weeks off.
“Sometimes,” he said “people aren’t as fortunate as I was. I was lucky. Grace, you know, with God’s grace and mercy, I didn’t ever do any significant jail time, or penitentiary time, but everybody isn’t as fortunate. Some of them get numbers that ruin their lives — 15, 20, 30 years — that’s 16-17-year-old kids who just really were trying to, out of ignorance, make a better life for themselves.”
That’s in the song, too, with a play on words to indicate the difference: momma praying for Jesus’ peace, others spraying a piece.
Though he calls himself fortunate, his college career was not easy. “‘Hustle Harder’ is this,” he said, and told his story:
One day, as he was leaving for work in Houston, a police officer met him at the door with an eviction notice. His roommate had the lease, and he paid her his share of the rent, but she neglected to tell him that she was not paying the landlord.
He lost most everything in the eviction. The officer let him take his work backpack, his bags, a pair of pants, one pair of underwear, one shirt, and he went to work.
They lived on borrowed floor space for weeks.
“The whole time, I had to compartmentalize all of that anger and frustration and still go to work, be able to provide because my kids were still dependent on me, and I still needed to finish school, because that was the purpose of coming down here.”
He continued, “So, I couldn’t just drop out and work full time, because that would have been failure. Like, what was the point of coming to Houston? I lost everything and didn’t even accomplish the goal of what I left for — to get a degree to better your circumstance. So, I finished seeing the course through until I got my degree, but there was some trials and tribulations along the way.”
“That,” he concluded, “was hustle harder, hustle smarter. I was not, at this point in my life, going to take a chance of selling some drugs or something like that, like I had in my youth. I was hustle harder, hustle smarter.”
Lucid Dreams has six tracks in addition to Hustle Harder: “Tonite,” featuring KG; “L’s,” featuring LB; “Persecuted by Pain”; “Making the Bandz”; and “Top of the World.”
“Lucid dreams, you know, are the more vivid, explicit type dreams that simulate reality, where you can remember everything perfectly, every detail, where you can see every definition, every pixel. Sometimes life happens to us like that.”
And sometimes songs.
Connect to Moose Biggz and to his metaphoric rap, reality and hip-hop on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
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