Check Out The New Single From Fort Worth Rapper Lou Charle$, Whose Name Deserves A Little Recognition On The East Side Of The Metroplex, Too.

Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.

Lou Charle$ – “What a Feeling”
RIYL: Figuring out who you really are.
What else you should know: Banksy, Jandek and Lou Charle$ share something in common.

All three are averse to sharing their identity.

OK, so perhaps the former two are far better than the latter, but Charle$ still tries to maintain a degree of mystery behind who he is. Even his website’s URL is whoisloucharles.com.

What we do know about Charle$ is this: He’s a hip-hop artist from Fort Worth who has been active since 2011; he’s opened for acts such as Immortal Technique and Chamillionaire; and Fort Worth Weekly once said his “verses flow like rain down a window – subtle but steady, hubristic yet hypnotic.”

Those qualities are just as existent in his new single, “What a Feeling.”

The song opens with a string instrumental, then makes a sudden splash into Travis Scott territory with a similar flow and vocal delivery, complete with impressively-produced trap snares and bass lines. As the verses build momentum, the opening instrumental backs up the beat and Charle$’s vocals.

The mostly poppy production takes notes from the trap movement that is trendy in hip-hop circles today, but also infuses the styles of the dirty south hip-hop that dominated the movement in the ’00s. In this track, Charle$ seems to recognize trap’s ubiquity in hip-hop and adapts accordingly. But it doesn’t come off as pandering. His flow still seems natural, and his style seems authentic all the same.

Apropos to the mystery behind Charle$’s identity is the close of this track, which ends with a woman saying, “Who is Lou?”

Honestly, the suspense is killing us, too.

Cover photo via the rapper’s Facebook page.

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