New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ MondoTunes) Chris Strong, in collaboration with Tonez, "the Wicked Bally," has released his new single "80 Proof" on Holland Jungle Music. The track is characterized by a laid-back melody line and an up-front beat that neither steals the limelight from Bone Tone nor fails to garner attention. Tonez's lyrics are well-written and performed effortlessly by the man sometimes called the Wicked Bally. At two and a half minutes long, "80 Proof" is not a track that will be used as the background music for a feature-length film, but it may very well inspire many music fans to question why Tonez hasn't made hours and hours of quality music like this already, when he seems clearly capable of achieving the big time.
Tonez's style is at once reminiscent of the great rappers from the 1990s and very contemporary, cutting-edge, almost prophetic. As R&B learns from its nearly infinite autotune mistakes between the years 2000 and 2008, chances are we can expect much more urban music to come out like Tonez: well-sung and well-phrased, with Strong's funky, clean beats that could be played live on a drum kit just as easily as they could be reproduced on old 808s or 909s. That Strong and Tonez cleave closely to the oldschool ways of making rap music is not as counter-intuitive as it might seem: he sites as artistic references FloRida, Wiz Khalifa, and Gym Class Heroes, all of whom took their own cues from the masters. Christ Strong's work is rap music that the music scene has needed for a long time. Tonez is very easily as talented as anyone coming out of the radio today.
This is the first professionally published track by Strong and Tonez on Holland Jungle Music (typographically represented as hOLLAND jUNGLE in fanzines and online) but to hear these men go, it definitely sounds as if it will not be the last. With this first single complete and ready for purchase and download on iTunes globally, it's almost certain that we'll see Bone Tone publishing an extended play record online any day now, or perhaps beginning his American tour.
The Single"80 Proof" is distributed globally by MondoTunes (www.MondoTunes.com) and is available at iTunes for convenient purchase and download.
| 
