Ray Cash - Bumpin' My Music Featuring Scarface Audio

Ray Cash
Bumpin' My Music Featuring Scarface
Audio Stream

What do you know about Cleveland, Ohio? Maybe you know it as a symbol of urban pain and neglect, a city with a troubled history of race explosions? Well, whatever you think, or don't think, of Cleveland, twenty-five-year-old MC Ray Cash.

"I'm from the Eastside of Cleveland," Cash muses. "Grew up in this spot called 'The Hill,' directly across from the projects. I was a young cat, seeing everything that was going on. My mama would tell me, 'Don't take your ass across the street.' But I was a kid, you know, so I was fascinated. Back then it was real heavy with the crack and the guns and everything. Cleveland ain't nothing but a big ghetto anyway, man."

But that environment also provided the groundwork for Ray Cash the MC. "I got into hip-hop from hanging around the older dudes," he remembers. Cleveland's geographic centrality fed Ray's development and the music he makes today. Growing up in the Midwest the influences come from everywhere. Ray's mental mixtape was packed with the NWA's, Jay Z's, Eightball and MJG's, and UGK's, a cross-regional menu that's certainly influenced Ray's mic steelo, a silky baritone that flits from topic to topic with a natural, almost old school comfort.

"When I came up people just cared about putting out good music. Didn't seem like they were hung up on whether they sold a million the first week. You don't get that kind of feel no more. The other day I was watching videos with three of my dudes when 'Big Poppa' came on. And everybody just stared like they were in a daze. You miss it. A cat telling you some real honest shit. You don't hear that no more. And that's part of why my approach is the way it is. A lot of people only know what's on the radio, and they accept it. I don't wanna just accept it."

For his album, and career, Ray Cash, fittingly, holds some straight-up, clear-eyed ambitions. "I want to be respected. Look, everybody wanna hit some numbers. And don't get me wrong; I wanna hit some numbers too. But I want to be respected. For where I'm from and for what I'm saying. And every time I come out I want got get my point across. Man, I never wanted to be a rapper from the time I was 13 or something. It just came on me when I hadn't even been thinking about. I'm here for a reason."

Ray Cash is talking the truth from the booth, just spitting the facts.

Check out 'Bumpin' My Music' featuring Scarface.