Stop Sleepin: The Kid Daytona

The 25 year old Bronx emcee has been in the game for a minute, as he signed his first record deal as part of a young rap group straight out of high school.

Even though that deal, made with Atlantic Records, was short lived, The Kid Daytona gained a good understanding of how the industry worked at an early age.

Daytona jumped into the hip hop scene as a solo artist last year with A Tribe Called Fresh co-signed by DJ Cipha Sounds.  This project, where he went in on the classic era of hip hop, showed that the emcee wasn’t playing.  With a mixtape title like that, The Kid Daytona got a lot of listens from people ready to rip him apart, however these dudes who came in looking to see the young emcee fail were quickly impressed by his lyrical ability.

The buzz he built off of A Tribe Called Fresh led into his next project The Daytona 500, which The Kid Daytona used as a segway into his most recent mixtape Come Fly With Me.

Here is an introductory video to The Daytona 500, where Daytona explains the segway mixtape:

The Daytona 500 features all the producers from Come Fly With Me chopping up the same sample to create 5 different tracks.  The Kid Daytona used these tracks and mixtape to build the machine that listeners would use to fly in his latest work, Come Fly With Me.

To give you a taste of The Kid Daytona’s lyrical side, check out this verse from The Daytona 500’s, “The Body.”

“When they was on the mixtapes,
I was wishing we could switch place,
Now they lookin shit faced on the milk carton,
So far from reaching my peak,
Still tweakin my physique,
For the cover,
by myself, not with nine others,
No disrespect to those brothers,
but they know I’m comin, hahahah,
Cause they can hear my footsteps,
I know they hear my footsteps.”

Those are some powerful words, telling the dudes from the XXL Freshman of ‘09 magazine cover to watch out cause he’s coming!

Check out the whole mixtape here:

That five song mixtape does a great job leading into Come Fly With Me, and shows us The Kid Daytona’s ability to create music off of a concept, something that is becoming ever more important in today’s hip hop world!

Come Fly With Me’s lead single, “Air Born,”  features a smooth beat from producer 6th sense, and an equally smooth video directed by Derek Pike.

Word is, the homie Bun B came through for the video shoot and asked for nothing in return, not even a hotel room.  That’s true love and respect coming from a hip hop legend for the new age emcees.

Perhaps the best line from the song is:

“My narrow mind got me petrified,
Of fake niggas and bitches who want to Papelbon,
Pitch their way into my life,
In the 8th or 9th inning,
Last minute fake advice givers.”

I’ve never heard a rapper spit a verse about a Major League Baseball closer, ha!  The Kid Daytona does a great job with that line, calling out all the people running into his life now that he’s starting to see success around the corner!

Big shout out to Dee and Ricky who made the cigarette piece on Bun B’s hat in the video.  These guys have been making some sick jewelry for hip hop videos for a minute now.

For a kid who didn’t know what a blog was until his first mixtape dropped, The Kid Daytona sure is all over them now!  The artist’s current strategy focuses on building his fan base, knowing that the label deal will come when everything is in place.

Already standing apart with his lyricism and ability to create dope concepts, one can only imagine what The Kid Daytona could do with the marketing power of a major label behind him!