Hip-hop music has been largely attributed to having roots in New York City, specifically the Bronx, dating back to the 1970s. Like all music genres, international influence plays a key role in the development of modern day hip-hop and R&B. The Canadian hip-hop scene took off in the 1980s, mainly remaining underground giving us renowned artists such as Maestro Fresh Wes and Devon until the early 2000s. Now the Canadian hip-hop music scene is unprecedented with record breaking artists leading the music industry.
One of these refreshing contemporary R&B artists is Toronto native, Terrell Morris. Morris represents true mature artistry in this specific genre, which can be hard to come by these days. He is a self-taught singer, songwriter, poet and bass player. Morris was practically raised in the Canadian hip-hop scene. His step-father, Dolo, was one of the members in the Juno award winning 90s Canadian hip-hop duo, Ghetto Concept. Taking inspiration from his family as well as artists such as Jay-Z, Erykah Badu and Raphael Saadiq, Terrell Morris has created a truly unique sound.
His songs have over 3 million streams on Spotify and he doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. Morris released his second album ‘Lavender’ in 2020 combining local talent including Gary Beals as well as Andria Kain and trumpet player Rudy Ray. This album features one of his grooviest singles, ‘You Got The Love’. This song is bouncy and seems to combine a bit of retro funk with some modern bass heavy hip-hop. Morris is not afraid of using instruments in his music, and in this song you can even hear some evolved cowbell, which I think is brilliant. This song is aimed towards a love interest with high hopes of meeting up and showing her a good time.
In October 2020, Terrell Morris released a professional lyric video for ‘You Got The Love’ and it is just as extraordinary as the track. The lyric video starts with an artist introduction and a stunning illustrated sketch of Morris himself. Throughout the video, this same artist has sketched out the other visuals in the music video including Toronto-specific street signs, fast food, the Paris skyline, a Toronto streetcar and a chic downtown side street bar. These sketches are so unique and inspired. They have a cool inner-city edge to them, as if these drawings came from a street artist or a student sketching out what they see around them on the subway downtown. These drawings seem to take inspiration from a modern style of art called Urban Sketching. They are visually poetic, capturing a second in time, and they truly lay out the mood for this lyric video.
The single artwork for Morris’ album ‘Lavender’ is a post-impressionist painting of himself with the use of vivid colours and a thick paint application with an emphasis on distorting forms. This expressive effect was successfully reproduced as the genre for this video in all the background imagery. We see the use of thickly applied retro colours such as blues, pinks, greens and golds. This funk inspired colour palette is complimented by the colour choices in the lyric texts themselves which appear to pair perfectly with their background.
The font choices represent the hip-hop song’s entire vibe, using two unique styles. One appears to be an old-school block font that bounces on the screen to the beat and the other is a fancier cursive font that has a distinctive paint stroke style. These two lettering styles capture both the song’s retro music inspiration as well as unifying the artistic brand of the album.
These backgrounds layered with the sketches and the font choices is an exceptional art exhibit displayed harmoniously in a high-quality lyric video. Terrell Morris is a remarkable artist, and this video captures the creativity of his music and successfully portrays that visually using equally inspiring artwork.
Check out the lyric video for ‘Got The Love‘ on Terrell Morris’ YouTube Channel here:
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