Ceres rap artists release new project • ‘Run on Sentences’ collaboration reflects life in pandemic lockdown Ceres natives Nevin Shoker (in front) and Kevin Elkin collaborate in the music video Melrose Blues. The song is scheduled to be released in an indie film this year. The music video was shot at Shoker’s Los Angeles apartment.
Two aspiring alternative hip hop musicians who grew up in Ceres – one now living in Los Angeles – have just released a collaborative project born of the 2020 pandemic lockdown.
Nevin Shoker, 24, whose rap name is ibeshocker, and Kevin Elkin, 27, who goes by Kevvie3TM, collaborated for the mini-album “Run on Sentences.” Shoker, a 2014 Central Valley High School graduate, said the Extended Play’s main themes are insecurities and anxiety of independent artists striving for success as well as holding onto hope and running on optimism.
When I first learned on New Year’s Eve that MF DOOM had died at age 49 (and had in fact died on Oct. 31), my first response was disbelief. Not in a figurative, “I can’t believe he’s really gone” way, but in the literal sense that I couldn’t completely believe he was really gone. MF DOOM was hip-hop’s greatest supervillain, a virtuoso of mystery and subterfuge: What would be more diabolically DOOM than faking his own death? Even now, days later, part of me holds on to hope that somewhere there’s an empty casket, a missing mask, another improbable comeback on the way.