Artist Guide

"Take Heed"

Young Guy #33 The New Generation Southern Soul

July 1, 2024:

Young Guy Enters The Southern Soul New Generation Top 100 Artists chart at #33!

Daddy B. Nice's Profile:

The rise of Young Guy and his smash single "Take Heed" (six million YouTube views and counting) has certainly caught me by surprise. When it charted on my Top 10, I thought both the artist's name and the song's title were self-defeatingly obscure. I remember feeling compelled to add a parentheses after the title with the words "the same thing..." so that fans who had heard it somewhere could associate it with something in the title. "The same thing," of course, being the oft-recorded southern soul meme, "The same thing it took to get her, the same thing it'll take to keep her".

That Young Guy was joining such a long queue of tradition also lulled me to sleep on the "guy," although I was alert enough to write that "Take Heed" was done with "astonishing depth and maturity" and could become "a career cornerstone," to which I believe any well-versed southern soul fan would agree.

I mentioned two potential influences (this was June of 2023, by the way): Calvin Richardson and Stan Butler, Richardson for his smooth RnB and hiphop production shadings and Butler for his long yet riveting monologues. It's the long, talking introduction to "Take Heed" that gives the project its extra dimension.

But the artist and classic song I believe best mirrors, reveals and even portends the staying power of "Take Heed" is Ronnie Bell's "I'll Pay The Shipping Cost," which once upon a time had an eye-popping six million views but now has (yawn) something like twenty-two million views. Mind you, we're talking page views, not record sales. But if there's any doubt page views translate to revenue, only reference Ronnie Bell's presence on southern soul's most lucrative tour, the Blues Is Alright.

So much in the art of southern soul is dependent on the realism and veracity of the song (at root its originality), not the technical aspects of production, as in so many other genres. That's a crude generalization begging for an exception, of course, but it is in the veracity department that "Take Heed" and "Shipping Cost" excel. Their narrators (the singers) reach out and grab you with an almost physical presence. Musically, "Take Heed" is obviously better than "Shipping Cost," but again that's not the measuring stick at this level. Will it resound like the latter?

The signs are good for Young Guy. Without even a debut album to his credit. the Joliet, Illinois-born, Mississippi-bred, former hiphop artist is already headlining small, multi-act venues, the vast majority of revelers requesting "Take Heed". The singles keep coming, and they're getting better and better (see Recommended Tracks, right-hand column). "100 Missed Calls" is charting at a lofty #3 in Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 Singles as this is being written. But "Take Heed" is heads-and-shoulders above them all---towering over them---and with "Take Heed's" success Young Guy has made the hernia-popping leap to musical legitimacy.

--Daddy B. Nice

Honorary "B" Side

"Lay Low Play Slow "