He was brought up with music around him, his parents being heavily into rock and roll music. His siblings were heavily into music as well, playing various instruments and visiting studios.
In his professional career, Rittz saw the peaks and troughs of the music industry, being between record deals, managers and promoters. Fortunately, in 2009, Yelawolf got in touch to help with a little financial support, but again Rittz found himself in a trough, having to work some 9 to 5 jobs to support his career. Fortunately, he released his mixtape “White Jesus” and re released it as “White Jesus: Revival”. He signed to Tech N9ne’s Strange Music record label in 2012, and started working full time on a slew of mixtapes. They released a remix of “Bloody Murdah” immediately. He released his debut album “The Life and times of Jonny Valiant on April 30th 2013 and then on October 15th that year, Rittz was fortunate enough to appear at the prestigious BET Hip Hop Awards, alongside his contemporaries, Wax, Emis Killa, Jon Connor and Rhapsody.
On September 9th 2014, Rittz released his sophomore studio album entitled “Next to Nothing”, which features appearances from Twista, Trae tha Truth, Mike Posner, Scar and B.o.B. The album went on to debut at number 14 in the Billboard 200 and achieved 21,627 units sold in it’s first week alone
Whether you’re into rap music or not, Rittz is an incredible musician and performer, and you can guarantee that he’s going to put on a great hip hop show, that I highly doubt anyone could dislike. Although his debut album was only released last year, he’s been on the music scene for many years, and is a seasoned performer who commands the stage with ease.
He opened the show with the title track from Life and Times of Jonny Valiant, which had everyone singing along right from the start. The thin that I really took away from the performance, was the way that the narrative of each song was exposed and told with some much emotion and conviction, that I took a whole new meaning from each song than what I experienced from the record. His diction was perfect, and every lyric was clear.
He played a great selection of tracks, including a couple of teasers from Next to Nothing, which hadn’t even been released. Hearing new material at shows is incredible, and I loved every moment of it. The audience were on fire from start to finish and it really was a great show.