Z-Ro

Z-Ro has always been one of the South's best and most overlooked lyricists. He's everything a Southern rapper isn't supposed to be: he uses his sluggish monotone flow to spin hyper-realistic ghetto narratives that are generally associated with the East. "City Streets" is a harrowing look at his H-Town home that projects sorrow instead of menace, and "No More Pain" finds salvation in suffering and is the sort of track that Tupac would've killed. Z-Ro's sincerity can occasionally get the best of him -- "T.H.U.G." is a mawkish mess -- but most of I'm Still Livin' is great confessional hip-hop.