Rich Robbins Offers The -Soft and Tender: Deluxe-UAES Album Review
Rich Robbins released the deluxe of his critically acclaimed EP Soft And Tender this past August, 16th.
There is no doubt that there is a lane for Robbins’ music. Chicago has a niche audience for community-based music –– It’s, like, our thing.
Birthed as the antithesis of the prevalent and violent drill music, Robbins joins the ranks of Damon Williams, Andréa Ranae, Ric Wilson, Goalden Chyld, Chairman Allen, Tweak G, and many, many (honestly too many to count) others that have made that transition to helping the community to creating music for the community.
So, if that’s your lane, you should thoroughly enjoy Robbins’ additions to his 2023 standout Soft And Tender, as he added three new songs to the original five-song project.
The deluxe has added “Season Migration,” “Green Chakras,” and “Coffee Mug.”Peep some lyrics from Green Chakras”: =
“I deal with grief on the daily”
“Pouring out leftover lean”
“Need me some yoga, cups of granola”
“Mantas, what will I be without my trust”
“Police want to see me locked up”
“Niggas wanna shoot my block up”
“I just wanna be me”
Robbins does very well providing music for that Chicago student kid who went off to college and feels beholden to the environment they escaped and wants to preach the message of healing. He has studied and painted that corner of the market very well for himself.
His music pairs well with the work he does off the mic, which is why, I am very sure, he will always have a solid niche audience here in Chicago.
I mean, it’s a fact that Robbins has even alluded to himself: “They are all my peers age-wise, but I look up to them so much career-wise. There’s a lot that they did in their younger years I still to this day try to emulate,” he said in a 2023 interview.
That’s right: Robbins is one of the many young Chicago creatives during Chicago’s Renaissance Era from 2012 to 2016 who leveraged the skills they learned in local community-building spaces to make a venture into music.
Robbins caught wind of that now legendary open mic crew at that special moment for Chicago music thanks to his full-year, full-tuition “hip hop and urban art” scholarship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison called First Wave.
According to Robbins, the program was principled around three pillars: arts, activism, and academics — three areas of focus that permeate his music to this day and which made him fast and easy friends with acts like Noname, Chance, The Rapper, TheMIND, PIVOT Gang, Mick Jenkins, Vic Mensa and many other spoken word legends that ended up blowing up at the time.
And much like them, Robbins has been well-endowed in the community space.
Not only does he teach high school students how to write poetry and songs but Robbins, using his experience as a tenured slam poet, founded Respect The Mic –– an open-mic series that takes place monthly at Positive Space Studios in Logan Square –– five years ago which has been since dubbed as Chicago’s “most intimate open mic.”
Robbins is also an educator and TV host of the Soft and Tender series which debuted on CAN TV in January 2024. The interview series explores fatherhood from sons’ perspectives and is an adaptation of his 2023 EP of the same name.
The Philly-based, now Oak Park resident, is a teaching artist whose first introduction to the Chicago creative scene came via the Young Chicago Author’s (YCA) Louder Than a Bomb poetry festival.
Robbins' debut dropped in 2018 with his freshman album Red Butterfly which included collaborations with TheMIND. Robbins later dropped his second EP On The Horizon in 2021 which featured Mother Nature. While buzzworthy in the niche spaces in which Robbins came up, Robbins, the rapper, did not gain a bigger audience.
One could say Robbins’ breakthrough came last year, with the release of his Soft and Tender EP. Not only did the four-song EP lead to his television show, but it was voted “Best individual hip-hop artist” in the Reader’s 2023 Best of Chicago audience poll.
Robbins even collaborated and received a cosign from major Chicago artist Mick Jenkins on the single “Now We Got Money” in 2023.
So, The Soft And Tender: Deluxe series has a purpose. The purpose it serves helps the spaces he currently occupies and may only be for that specific Chicago audience that is looking for those “better myself and make the world better” type of bars.
This album, I'm sure, however, will slap at community organizing events and is safe to play around children.
