Meet Clever: The Music Industry’s Best Kept Secret

“But I always say that if Robert Plant and Jay Z had a baby, and then left that baby in a dumpster, and it took them a long time to get where they would go, then that would be me.”

Courtesy of Universal Music Group

This is how a rapper who’s latest album features the likes of Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Lil Baby, Juice WRLD, and Post Malone describes himself during a press conference.

That rapper is Clever, an artist hailing from Alabama with a history of writing for the likes of Snoop Dogg, David Foster, and artists in every genre from Christmas, to pop, to even translating a Hebrew album to English for the Israeli billionaire Haim Saban. He recently was signed with Post Malone and had close ties with Juice WRLD, who he pays tribute to through his latest album, Crazy, released in March 2021. These days he finds himself constantly gaining more followers and being reached out to by varieties of chart topping acts, and all these people have something in common- they’re seeking him out.

Original Artwork of Clever by Lee Lou Wooden

But it wasn’t always like this for Clever, the 35 year old artist has taken his time getting to this point, he’s learned the ins and outs of the music industry and grown a lot as a musician and an artist in the process. He’s admittedly a family man, who puts his wife and son first, (you can even hear little melodies from his son in the la-la-la’s at the end of Call Me Nobody), and as mentioned, he’s spent a good portion of his career songwriting. Yet even with his extensive musical resume, and talent acknowledged by big players in just about every genre, his story is not one of overnight success as we’ve become quite accustomed to seeing. His is an authentic one, full of highs, lows, and in betweens, which has recently begun to earn him another title- “the music industries best kept secret.” 

With a history of writing music for just about every genre in the span of his career so far, yet his solo name upcoming, Clever comes to the hip hop scene with a very interesting perspective in music. While he admits it was fun to write for these different artists, he’s finally taking the stage himself explaining, “when I write songs for other people, it takes the fun out of it for me, because it's not my escape anymore” and he eventually got a bit burnt out on writing songs for other people. He explained how in the past when he’d pitch songs to labels they’d often like the way his voice sounded with the song and try to convince him to perform the song in a style that wasn’t quite him. This all though is part of his unique story and has led him to where he is now, writing and performing his own music, in his own style. 

But it isn’t the big name collaborations, labels he’s signed with, or the constantly climbing number of followers and streams he’s gaining that I find most fascinating about Clever, it’s the fact that before he was the rapper we’re all coming to know, he’s a poet, and after listening to just one of his songs, that’s clear as can be. His lyrics share the most vulnerable parts of himself, they tell real stories of love and pain, and his lyrics mirror him and his reality. They reflect his own experiences, and in turn when you listen to them you don’t just get a feel of what he’s going through, they connect you to your own experiences with the situations he raps about. 

“1 a.m., I'm lost in you/Stand in between the street light and the shadows on the ground/When I smoke to close the day, a dozen roadblocks along the way/I hope you feel the way you feel forever/'Cause Heaven knows I'll still love you when we're old/And talk about all the times that we had/I hope you know you still have my heart and soul/And on the days that I feel dead on the inside/You make me feel—/Hand-in-hand, I hold the world/Eye-to-eye, I see everything I need/And your face under the moonlight/Scared to fly, but I know you might/I just hope the man upstairs is lettin' me in when you get there”

- Excerpt from the song “Alive” featured on the album Crazy 

He explained to me that to him “music and poetry go hand in hand” and music itself is “just another form of poetry”. He follows no formulas in his writing and doesn’t attempt to falsify any emotions in it, when you listen to his lyrics, they’re true to what he’s feeling. While he admits in the past he was hesitant to be more vulnerable in his music since it opens up the availability to more questions, he wanted to write from an honest perspective, knowing an artists fanbase is at the end of the day still human and a lot like the artist themselves, and they too just want to listen to music they can relate to. 

“You know, a music artist, in my opinion, is someone that should be like, you know, a sanctuary for those kind of people that they relate to as well, you know, what I mean? A hospital for the wounded, you know, that can relate to their same issues. And I think it's our job as music artists to kind of crawl under the rubble and free people from the debris that we had to experience as human beings as well, you know, and kind of talk about it in a way that would be almost therapeutic, you know? [...] So I think, of course, you know, it'd be a lot easier, I think, to hide, and to not put as much stuff on people's radar as an open book, but at the end of the day, like you're really trying to find those people that are following you. And you can’t really create that following, that cult-like following, you know, without opening your heart and, and putting it out there on the line. You know.”

With all that being said, I wonder why we’re still calling him the music industry's best kept secret, because when it comes to Clever, there are no secrets. While his story might not be one of overnight success or instantly going viral, I think that’s what makes him so great. This isn’t an artist who’s trying to write songs that are forgotten as quickly they’re discovered. This is an artist who’s sharing pieces of his heart within every lyric he writes and is writing the kind of music that fans can turn to throughout every point in their life and find is still relevant to their lives. There is no secret here, while his name might still be upcoming his music bares all and he hides behind no mystique or facade. With this artist there’s no guessing to who he is behind the lyrics, he’s let down his guard completely in his writing and shown us who he is, what he’s been through, and connects to his fans and listeners in a very authentic and human way. 

So let’s finally spill the “secret”. This is Clever, a 35 year old poet turned rapper from Alabama. He’s a family man, songwriter, and he just released his album Crazy, an album which goes beyond the realms of what we’ve become used to when it comes to music albums, because this one is a brutally honest and vulnerable documentation of the artist whose name is on the cover. It’s a tale of Clever. Clever in love, pain, anger, and everything in between, and if you aren’t familiar with him now, by the end of this album you definitely will be. 

“At the end of the day, [...] I think if you're growing year to year, that's the most important thing and just being able to look back 10 years from now and say that you put out the best music that you could, that's really the most important thing. I think I want people to look at me like someone that never really changed, never settled, never compromised my style and my artistic side and changed some lives. You know, really poured my heart and emotions out there in a way that only I could say it and, and do it in a way that only I could do it.” 

You can listen to Clever’s new album here, find him on Instagram, and on Twitter.