Lyric Jones has been steadily making a name for herself in the Los Angeles Hip Hop scene and beyond for the past several years.
But one day it dawned on her that she hadn’t paid tribute to her hometown of Boston. So, she decided to fly across the country to Massachusetts’ capital and shoot a video for the track “Beantown (Still Lovin It).”
Filmed by Trill Is Bliss and directed by Lyric herself, the visual highlights several spots in the City of Champions that hold meaning for Lyric, including her parents’ house. It even has Lyric mimicking the swagger demonstrated by Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X film.
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“I’m adopted at birth,” Lyric tells HipHopDX. “I was born in New Jersey, but when I was a couple of days, my parents adopted me and I was in Boston ever since. I consider Boston my birthplace, even though the hospital where I was born was in Jersey.
“The video kind of outlines my steps. I realized I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and I have no songs really paying homage to my hometown. I sat back and was disappointed in myself.”
Lyric, who recently started the B.A.R.S. Only Live monthly Hip Hop jam session and open mic event in Los Angeles, admits she was ready to leave Boston immediately after graduating from high school.
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“I was like, ‘I’m getting the fuck out of here,'” she explains. “I just went to college and then I just forgot. Then years and years go by and your memory starts to fade of those places and those people and where where you went and the street names, all of those things.
“And I said, ‘Nah, I can’t.’ I just realized that I haven’t been home. I haven’t done any videos back home. I barely have collaborated with people from back home. And that’s just because I’ve been moving ever since I graduated high school. I’ve just been gone and so I had to make a deliberate effort to just pay tribute to what planted the seeds of the Lyric Jones everybody sees now.”
“Beantown (Still Lovin It)” comes from Lyric’s recent collaborative project, GA$ MONEY,which features production from beatsmith Nameless.
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Watch the visual above and check back with HipHopDX later this week for a full interview.
