I'm a let you know right now that you can't judge a book by it's cover or judge an artist by their album cover. I downloaded Big Ran's "It Was All A Dream" mixtape a while ago but never got around to listening to it because the album cover looked like a No Limit Records throwback. And I'll be the first to tell you that I was NOT a No Limit fan. So this event taught me a little lesson about judging stuff before I hear it. After I buckled myself down and listened to the mixtape about two weeks ago, I haven't stopped listening to it since. My man is nice on the mic. I was thinking to myself that his rhyme skills definitely didn't match his album cover. On his cut, "Don't Stop Dreamin'", he straight rips it over the Fonzworth Bently instrumental, "Everybody". He said,

"Somebody woke up in a box this morning/Somebody woke up looking for a rock this morning/But if I introduced them to the Rock this morning/They would've went from the bottom to the top this morning. And yeah He could've stopped the tourment/You gotta shake the drama like a stock that's not performing."

Ran is an emcee that uplifts you and challenges you to think bigger about pursuing your dreams and striving to live the good life. Hailing from San Francisco, you don't hear too many cats reppin' the 49er city. To me when I finally heard Ran it was like a jewel I was sittin' on but didn't even know it. Remember when you used to go to your hood record store (R.I.P. to the record stores) and you picked up an album that you wasn't sure about but then after you heard it you thought it was another dope cd to add to your collection? That's what I did when I picked up Reasonable Doubt back in 1996 when I took a chance on this unknown emcee named Jay-Z and now I'm sharing my experience I had when I finally listened to Big Ran's mixtape. Now that I've been exposed to hot emcees like Big Ran I'll have to go back and listen to a few other mixtapes that I've looked over for a while. Hopefully we'll hear more of Big Ran and see his dream come into reality.

Check out Big Ran at www.werighthere.com and download the mixtape "It Was All A Dream". You won't be disappointed.