Torrio is a seasoned independent artist with seven albums behind him and a career that goes back further than most people would guess. In the late 1990s, he independently released a single that landed national retail placement through Camelot Music, which led to a behind-the-scenes role at Rival Records promoting acts like Men At Large before eventually signing an artist development deal with the label himself. After parting ways in 2001, he kept building independently – three nationally distributed albums, radio airplay, award nominations, collaborations with Cleveland artists and national names alike. “Jokes On You,” released June 5th, is his latest, and it sits squarely in the tradition of hip-hop as personal testimony: a confrontational anthem about staying focused while everyone around you counts you out, delivered with the kind of unapologetic confidence that only comes from having actually been through it.
The song uses very unconventional dark harmony that can only come as a result of experimentation from a self-taught musician, but the eerie and disconnected feel it creates supports the aggression and the confrontational nature of the song well. The chorus features what sounds like either a real vocalist processed to sound robotic or some kind of sampled vocal – the end result lands somewhere between the two and is very interesting, like a horror movie soundtrack dropped into a rap record. It’s an unusual production choice for a song about resilience and self-belief, but it works precisely because it doesn’t go the obvious route. The dissonance in the music mirrors the dissonance of the situation the lyrics are describing – being surrounded by doubt while refusing to let it in.
That instinct to subvert expectation is what makes “Jokes On You” worth paying attention to. The message itself is well-worn territory in hip-hop, but the sonic frame Torrio builds around it is his own. Seven albums in, he’s still finding ways to make familiar themes sound like something you haven’t quite heard before.