The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Out & About

Media Credit: Courtesy Tommy Valentine Valentine took up politics while out of music as Bobby Saxon's campaign manager. [Click to enlarge]

Tommy Valentine went from battling rappers to battling depression and now, after a two year hiatus, has returned to Athens to re-forge the shards of his broken microphone.

"When things went wrong, they went wrong bad," Valentine, a political science major originally from Brunswick, NJ, said.

"I felt like I had lost who I was, so I put down the mic and walked away. It was like, in pursuing recognition; I stopped recognizing who I was."

Valentine, when recounting his decision to return to the stage, spoke of a Tuesday night freestyle competition hosted by a friend and fellow rapper known as Mon2.

"I tried to encourage him to get back up on stage," Mon2 said.

The battle rapper once known as Y.T., which is an acronym for Young Thomas, i.e. Tommy Valentine, remembers the night he decided to return to the stage.

"My girlfriend was trying to get me to go up and I was telling her all the reasons why I had stopped rapping. She asked me what was stopping me now, and then it was like all the business, drama, and ulterior motives just faded away, and it was back to me and a microphone," Valentine said.



He describes his lyrics as testing the limits of how much emotion hip-hop can have, and still be hip-hop.

"Johnny Cash described good songs as being about 'love, God, or murder,' and, there are enough murder songs in hip-hop, so I focus on love and God," he said.

His album "The Long Ride Home: Love Letters Volume I" has been described as "uncomfortably personal lyricism."

During AthFest 2006, Valentine said he was nominated for more Flagpole Awards than any other artist, including top three hip-hop artists, top three new and upcoming artist, and top three artists all genres.

The awards ceremony, which was held at the 40 Watt Club, helped to seed a relationship with the venue, which will host his comeback show tonight.

Valentine will flow over beats created by a young producer named Kameon Serlaren, aka, "CollegeBoy," who a freshman from Sugar Hill.

The show also will have two opening acts including the debut performance by Wildkard, and another rapper who goes by "Stanza."

"This is Wildkard's first show," Valentine said. "It's like their birth, and my re-birth."

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