The anti-American sentiment around the world is a lot like the anti-hip-hop sentiment in music: composed mostly of misunderstood generalizations. Like an American president, a president of hip-hop should be able to recognize this and act for the betterment of the culture and the spread of its authenticity.

Murs’ platform for fixing home encompasses both America and hip-hop. 

The 30-year-old, dreadlocked everyman certainly has the experience to serve as domestic rap’s spokesman. His dozen-album discography boasts of collabos with Slug and various members of his Living Legends crew, in addition to a handful of EPs, mixtapes and group full-lengths. 

This spring saw Murs kick off the third installment of his Paid Dues festival in San Bernardino, CA. “It’s still just a dream come true, being able to provide a summer platform for hip-hop,” he says of the swelling event. “It’s a getaway, where kids can be outside during the day that younger kids can go to and their parents feel safe dropping them off.”  Serving as a host and performer, Murs will lead hip-hop heroes Rakim, GZA and De La Soul, beside emerging talent including Little Brother and Kidz In The Hall, to stops in New York, Ft. Lauderdale, Denver and San Francisco during the festival’s summer tour.  

With speculation of Guerrilla Union’s bigger hip-hop festival and Rock The Bells going international in the near future, Paid Dues could follow. “I think our billing over there might draw as many as some of the other, bigger festivals,” he says, detailing his experience living and touring overseas. “I’ve really been to Japan and Europe. I lived there for weeks at a time, sleeping on people’s couches, taking the train everywhere, not being able to pay for cabs and stealing from the grocery store because we didn’t have any money.”

These international stints helped pry open Murs’ eyelids to the global attitudes towards America and hip-hop. “I’m real anti leaving America right now,” he says. “In Germany, a kid literally asked me, ‘Yo, can I see your gun?’ I was like, what does that mean? Just because I’m a black American we have guns on us at all times? They really believe a lot of this shit. So until shit gets better in America, I don’t even really feel like leaving.”

“Away Too Long,” a track from his eagerly anticipated major label debut, Murs For President, has the LA native confessing that he is, “dying to make a difference,” in his American hip-hip home. “This is the longest I’ve ever worked on any one thing in my life,” Murs confesses about the album’s sixty originally recorded songs that were whittled down to fifteen, pending clearances. 

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