On a scale of one to Navio,

We have newbies and journeymen who have American accents on the microphone and Nakivubo accents off it.

This fakeness reduces the hip hop game and its players to a breathing myth whose last breath is but a flopped song away.

That said, every now and then there’s a revelation.

We’re talking about a rapper whose flow has defected from the loveless embrace of artifice to find art.

That rapper must be of a binary nature: part hip hopper, part poet.

This combination is the stock-in-trade of every spoken word artist: an armory of oratory rising above the thick of any verbal battle to declare victory in favor of poetry.

That rapper is Elmo GB Greyhair.

He is a spoken word artist and rapper with the mouthpiece of a musical instrument.

A few years ago, he debuted on the hip hop scene with a freestyling ability that was met with careful rapture from his audience.

Oh yes, the audience did not know what to expect and yet got more than what they would expect if they knew what to expect.

“I be in the quarters where the real hustlers be, am talking ‘bout the hood infested with poverty, drugs, prostitution, gambling. In the dark streets of where stoners be rambling but trust me we all gotta make a living off of life by choosing to walk the razor’s edge to overcome the strife …” he rhymed.

Elmo’s lyrics twinkled like a star bearded with the flame of the Greyhair, full of the fires of youth burnt out by truths of time.

He wields the microphone like a weapon as he baton-charges the crimes against hip hop.

Namely, weak performances chalked up to the blackboard teachings of how hip hop should be when we all know better.

Elmo’s voice is round and rounded, full of variety and expression modulated by a dramatic pause here and there.

Although he has ridden the circuit of underground hip hop for several years now, the realm of celebrity is still a different country to him.

Still, Elmo has what it takes to transition from rawness to the next level and so the time is coming when he will become a household name.