Hip Hop can be taken for granted in 2008. That was probably true in 1998 as well. However, for those outside of the over-saturation of artists, mixtapes, Myspaces and all the concentrated elements of the culture, Hip Hop as we knew it, still lives.

On the West African coast, Ghana is one of those places. There, a young Blitz The Ambassador eagerly awaited the arrival of Public Enemy. Not the "Fight The Power" P.E. or even "Shut 'Em Down" P.E., but the mid '90s evolution of the group, when touring started to overwhelm radio singles. The experience meant everything, and as Blitz grew, he chased the band and Hip Hop, opting to move to the United States above Europe to live.

In his time in the States, balanced between a college education in Ohio and now living in Brooklyn, Blitz has met his dreams head-on. Opening shows for Akon and Snoop Dogg - as well as Rakim and Chuck D, Blitz The Ambassador is bridging the gap between the Hip Hop of then and now - and always, night to night and show to show.

With his debut album Suicide Stereotype being a two-and-a-half-year creation, Blitz hasn't sprinted for success, he's earning his stripes slowly. Working towards "Bono status," the emcee/producer and graphic designer has bold views on the culture he's chased the last 15 years. To HipHopDX, he explains his love of ambient music, his hit "Hands of Time," and what a label needs to do to get him to raise an eyebrow and even consider "putting rims on the whoopty."

HipHopDX: How old were you when you left Ghana?
Blitz The Ambassador: I left Ghana when I was 17. I’m 25 now.

DX: What brought you here?
B: Family, number one. Education, number two. Hip Hop music, number three. Most of my family moved to Europe after we moved here; I was one of the only ones who stayed. My journey was always Hip Hop. It was my beacon of light. I’ve been following it since I was 10. I knew that there was no way I’d survive in England somewhere, not being as close to Hip Hop as I wanted to be.

DX: “Hands of Time,” I’ll go on record as saying it’s one of the five best songs by an unsigned artist in Hip Hop right now. How did it come to be?
B: “Hands of Time” is my chronicle. Like I said, Hip Hop has always been this beautiful thing. In hindsight, I can sit back and look at how fortunate I’ve been in being outside the looking glass, wanting to participate in something so far away. The closest I came to Hip Hop was in ’93 when Public Enemy came to Ghana. That had never happened before. Records like “Fight the Power” were huge, and that was the closest I’d ever been to that. I’m able to look at and participate in Hip Hop, still from the fan’s perspective. I feel like that’s what a lot of artists have lost over the years. Hip Hop is a very egotistical art. It really is hard for artists who’ve been doing it for a long time to be fans of the art. They don’t want to say they love somebody. I don’t know what it is, this deformed sense of vulnerability that a lot of artists have.

I think the reason why that song resonated with a lot of people is the fact that people are fans. At the end of the day, Talib Kweli or Mos Def was a fan of Rakim before they even picked up the pen. Unless you’re the beginning of this shit – and even those guys were fans of whatever else they were listening to. It’s a never-ending cycle of fans who are fortunate enough to participate in the art that they love. That’s just an overview.

As far as the record goes, I just wanted to do a dope, reminisce record. I’ve often not been happy with the way people have done that reminisce thing. It’s always been very one-sided. So what I wanted to do was talk about my life, from the perspective of the soundtrack that I was listening to. The first verse of that song is my earliest beginnings in what really got me close to Hip Hop. The second verse goes from being attracted to trying to participate in it, but it’s not easy, ‘cause you don’t have access to instrumentals. We never had those CD singles with instrumentals. We had to improvise. One of the things we did comin’ up was taking the last five or 10 seconds of the beat running out, and with two tapes, dub them back to back so you had two minutes of instrumentals to spit over. It’s that kind of all, by all means necessary type…I knew cats who breakdanced on gravel. Cardboard boxes and all of that shit, those are luxuries. The third verse is me now, being able to open for my heroes. This summer I just did gigs with Rakim, KRS, Chuck D. Chuck D brought me out and introduced me to the crowd like, “Yo, this kid is the future.” I told Chuck D, “Yo don’t even believe B, I was 10 or something when you came to Ghana.” I’d never seen Hip Hop. I can’t mask that I’m a fan.

DX: You also just performed with Akon, A-Trak and Kid Sister. How do you balance those crowds with the KRS-One or Chuck D crowds?
B: I’m very neutral. My background itself makes me very neutral. [I did a] show with Akon, and the next day I did a gig with Rakim. Being able to survive in all these worlds at the same time is just a function of hard work and having a very distinct identity. The crowd that I rocked to at the Akon show was nothing like the crowd that I rocked to at the Rakim show. Those two people might never even interact in life, but the bottom line is, it’s the essence that we bring. This shit feels new and it feels like the future, so all sorts of people take what they will from it. With Akon, I did a nine-piece band. Three horns, a string section, craziness. That’s the background I’m from. There’s no way I can write it without performing it. It’s very audience-friendly. Records are made to be performed. This is why my album has taken me two-and-a-half years to complete. Why? Because I have to make sure the records are resonating. Continued on page 2 »