M.C. K-Swift is an emcee/producer from Brooklyn who is part of the collective known as New Rap Order. He’s been going strong since he was a teenager in the early ‘90s. Last March, as the pandemic set in, he released an album called Keep Your Distance. Now, coming into 2021, he’s upping the ante and releasing an album a month for the entire year. He’s starting the project off with Pottery Class Volume 1: The Clay.

As you make your way through Pottery Class, it will slowly begin to be clear what K-Swift is referring to with the title of the album. That’s because K-Swift is an artist who views himself as an artist and educator, and he’s often wearing both hats at the same time. This is an album about taking that unmolded clay, his potential listners, and helping to shape them into something beautiful and sturdy. So while the album opens with a track like “The Essence,” which absolutely slaps, he’s also laying out his thesis statement for how he hopes to use his music to shape his community and help it reach its potential. As you continue across the album, Swift continues to walk this line, and it’s a delicate tightrope walk the whole time. That’s because there’s a big difference between music that will give you food for thought and motivate you to make change in your life, and music that just comes across as corny and preachy. So when he tackles a subject matter like drug use, and he wants to encourage people to get off the substances that just add to the problems that are already there, he’s also careful to spell out that there are much bigger racist and economic factors in play that drive people of color to drug use, so he’s not judging those that do use. What also helps this hip hop that is so message driven is that Swift is always making sure his messages are barred up, and that he’s delivering them over some beats that draw upon that great East Coast tradition of vintage soul sampling boom bap. It should also be mentioned that Swift does take a track here and there to recharge and have fun and maybe talk a little shit and pump himself up a little, which helps balance things out.

Time will tell how this ambitious idea of an album a month will play out, but for right now M.C. K-Swift is starting out on a solid foot with Pottery Class Volume 1: The Clay. It’s the type of well-rounded effort you’d expect from a veteran artist like Swift, giving you the music and the message.