Cliz Releases “Find Myself”

Set to a creeping pace and initially presented out of a haze of midrange and a distant but all the more ominous melody in the background, Cliz’s “Find Myself” doesn’t start off sounding like a pop track, but instead an invitation into the darkness that lurks just beyond your bedroom door. There’s a midnight-feel to the rhythm and the minor key melodicism seeping through our stereo speakers in the first fifteen seconds or so of “Find Myself,” but it isn’t until Cliz has made his first appearance that the context of this vibe can be fully understand and appreciated. We’re going deep with this player, and while he’s planning on fleshing out some personal statements in this piece, he isn’t shy about doing so with all of his cards on the table for us to see. 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ItsClizzy/

Part of what makes this track sound and feel so intimate is the style in which it was mixed, but I’m very hesitant to chock up any of the energy in the performance to the production tech alone. It should be said that Cliz is a rapper who doesn’t like to make his material about the filtration it’s given in the studio; hence why so much of his work, including and up to the release of “Find Myself,” has had a raw mixtape kind of a sound as opposed to anything even remotely steeped in pop varnish. Structurally speaking, the hook here flirts with a model familiar to those of us with an affinity for alternative rap, but that’s really where the connection between the songwriter and his peers ends here. 

The music video for “Find Myself” is the best kind of hip-hop video you can get these days – short, simple and unweighted by the cheesiness and camp of a constantly out of touch commerciality that exists within the genre’s top tier. Cliz doesn’t need all the bells and whistles some of his rivals do to make a point to us with visuals and the verses that match them just the same, and in choosing to keep all of the fireworks restricted to the natural appeal of the music, he further makes it known to critics like myself how committed he is to keeping his content purer than the average player would. 

APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/find-myself-single/1550818940

“Find Myself” clocks in at less than two and a half minutes total, but it isn’t missing that special ingredient that gets smart tracks into steady rotation on the FM dial; to me, its signature feature is Cliz himself. He’s throwing a lot of talent in our direction here and exhibiting a skillset that only comes with having over seven years of experience grinding in the independent market, and with any luck “Find Myself” will act as the cornerstone of a new album and proper follow-up to the 2016 release Personal Journal, Vol. 1. Fans have already waited five years, and with beats this good, I think that their demand for new music from Cliz could become too great for him to resist. 

Zachary Rush