The video for up-and-coming Fresno rapper MC Wicks’ song “Trying To Come Up” caught my attention today.  Fresno has a unique hip-hop scene that occasionally produces local legends and Wicks is on that path with lyrics that are straight forward and genuine.

In “Trying To Come Up”,  MC Wicks raps about life “in the ghetto” in the Central Valley city notorious for poverty and corrupt trigger-happy cops.  In the song he highlights police profiling and brutality.

He opens the song: “I love my city but it’s just so rough.  Got dirty cops yeah they’re all corrupt.  Wanna profile, throw us in handcuffs… for no reason, and they treat us like we’re heathens.”

He continues about police: “… crazy in the head got them ego trips, wanna see you flip so they can empty the clip.”

And poverty:”…it’s hard seeing homeless families in the streets, one day the same thing can happen to me.”

“…even though I got love and a whole lotta skills, sometimes I be starving and missing some meals.”

But I particularly like the shout-out to his mom:

I love my moms, ’cause she’s holding me down, I’m strugglin’, and she’s still stickin’ around.  She could have said fuck you and kicked me outta the house.”

Watch the VIDEO: