Dallas Rapper Tum Tum Releases New Track, Hops On Texas Leg of 2012 Smokers Club Tour.

Dallas rapper Tum Tum is more than just the guy behind one of the single greatest Dallas rap songs of all time. He's also something of an elder statesman in the local street rap scene.

And all because of timing, really. Thanks to 2007's “Caprice Music,” he was already established as a prominent Dallas entity by the time all that dance-oriented D-Town Boogie stuff blew up in 2008 and up and changed the game on him, if only temporarily.

He could've bitched. He could've distanced himself from that mess. To his credit, he didn't.

“I like [those D-Town Boogie rappers],” he told me in November 2008. “They're all cool. That's how I get down in the club. I do the Stanky Legg and the Rack Daddy, y'know? The boogie scene is the scene right now.”

In other words: He saw the sea change and, unlike contemporaries such as Big Tuck and older area icons like Mr. Pookie and Mr. Lucci, he embraced the new normal.

“You can just tell when the music's about to change,” he added in that same 2008 interview. “When Soulja Boy came out, you could tell. And now the radio ain't nothing anymore. You can drop your song on YouTube and get known. Radio didn't get the Dougie big. YouTube got the Dougie big. It's not just the radio now. This generation doesn't even leave the house. And Dallas is on that YouTube, man. A lot of these guys are college kids — B-Hamp, Lil Shine, Fat Pimp. They know what they're doing. Smart is the new gangster.”

Let's be frank: It's Tum's awareness of the changing landscape that's kept his name relevant over the past few years. He endured the Boogie (even going so far as to jump in on various remixes of that movement's instructional dance tracks), he came out on the other side as Dallas embraced a new star in Dorrough, and he now stands as a revered icon in the eyes of Dallas' new underground (A.Dd+, Brain Gang, etc.). It's why he's been able to frequently collaborate with Dorrough, why he says he's able to work on an upcoming collaborative track with A.Dd+ and, surely, how he ended up being added to the Texas leg of the 2012 Smokers Club tour, which hits Dallas on August 9 at Trees.

At that show, he'll appear on stage alongside the likes of fellow underground kinds Juicy J, Smoke DZA, Chevy Woods, Houston's Doughbeezy and a whole cast of others.

In the meantime, he's staying on his own grind, finishing up a soon-to-be released album, prepping a music video to be shot in Downtown Dallas on July 8 and releasing new music along the way — including a new track called “Yeah Doe,” which features guest appearances from the aforementioned Dorrough and one the D-Town Boogie movement's brightest stars, B-Hamp. No wonder the guy's so universally revered around these parts. Everyone's welcome around him.

Give the new track a stream below.

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