ILL Tac is a North Carolina MC out of the Greater Charlotte area with over twenty-five years in the game, writing, recording, performing spoken word, and competing in battle rap. He was one of three frontmen for The Balance, a live hip hop band out of Raleigh that grew from four to nine members and shared stages with Nappy Roots, Afro Man, and Better Than Ezra. He has performed at Red Bull Word Clash and took Rookie of the Year with Carolina Premiere Battle League in 2018. All of that feeds into where he is now.
“Ticket To the Stars” is his latest release, made with vocalist Larrin, and it does not sound like someone easing into anything. The first time Tac heard the beat, the bass knocked, then the track opened up and took him somewhere else. That contrast is the whole thing. Heavy and gritty at the start, then lifted and expansive as it moves forward. Producer Dr. Jonez built it around that shift, and Tac recognized it immediately as the feeling of deciding to leave a bad day behind.
Mad Influence added an acoustic guitar through the softer sections, giving the track a texture that is not all that common in rap. Larrin carries the vocals throughout and, toward the end of the song, invites the listener to spacewalk and lift off together. By the time the refrain hits, “Believe something? Relief coming,” landing over that same raw opening production, it means something different than it would have at the start.
There is also a line buried in the verses that most people will walk right past. Fellow musician Jrusalam introduced Tac to the memory palace, an ancient technique Roman orators used to memorize hours of speech, then added his own system using the hand to map points of constellations. Tac tucked the whole idea into a single line. That kind of depth runs through the track if you are looking for it.
Home Base Films put together visuals that started as a forty-second promo clip and turned into a full companion piece, one that carries the atmosphere of the song without following the verses. The track was recorded at Soule Jukebox with Larrin, and General handled mixing and mastering at OmniLab Studios. “Ticket To the Stars” is out now on all platforms.
Follow ILL Tac on Instagram.