Rap-A-Lot dropped their official version of Z-Ro’s Cocaine mixtape two weeks ago, but I can’t find a single review of it. Even Noz and noted Z-Ro biographer “Maynholup” have been quiet since offering these advance reports. My Rap-A-Lot connect never sent me a copy, and it’s not available on iTunes, so I’m still banging the extended “double-disc” bootleg version that leaked online earlier last month. That one’s 35 songs and nearly three hours heavy, fattened with previously released weight like a 15-minute DJ Screw mix of Guerilla Maab’s “Fondren and Main,” and Z-Ro leading a crowd at one of his shows through a singalong of his classic “Mo City Don” freestyle. It’s a daunting amount of material, but there’s some superb songs. Without all the extraneous stuff, and with better mixes, I imagine that 17-song official disc must make for a damn good listen.

The invisible-ness of Cocaine is not surprising. Rap-A-Lot barely promotes Z-Ro outside of Texas (I’m not sure exactly what they do for him there either), and the misanthropic MC has almost no web presence (His approach to the Internet neatly and unintentionally summed up in the hater-baiting intro to Let the Truth Be Told’s “Respect My Mind”: “Dubya dubya dubya dot fuck all a y’all dot com”). Which leaves Cocaine Blunts and Houston Press columnist Shea Serrano as the only reliable sources for (second-hand) Joseph W. McVey info. In the era of “Internet oversharing,” ‘Ro is one of rap’s last real enigmas, a certified legend in his hometown who drops good albums every year yet remains completely off the radar of bloggers and the traditional media (who just can’t be bothered to seek out artists who are not alerting them of their every move via Twitter/publicists/etc. anymore).

If you’re like me, this piques your interest in Z-Ro even more. Freed from a jail sentence that had kept him out of the booth for a year or two (no one seems quite sure—shit, what was he even in for?), he dropped two of last year’s best rap albums (in Crack and ABN’s It is What It Is). But the more I try to follow hs movements, the more I find that they don’t seem to be documented at all (I defy you to find any sort of in-depth interview with this guy anywhere). Z-Ro makes complex, painfully authentic loner music, the depth and appeal of which can not be properly appreciated in the context of 30-second streams, and glorified gossip websites. It’s funny. The gatekeepers have anointed Drake as the rapper we’re all supposed to be watching right now, ’cause he’s supposed to sound so natural mixing rapping and singing. But Z-Ro is a much more natural singer/rapper hybrid (Don’t think Aubrey owes a debt to Z-Ro? Seems he’d be the first to differ.) The more I hear Drake now, which is all the goddamn time, the more I want to hear ‘Ro.

Rappers today are appreciated for their ability to keep themselves firmly planted in the news cycle, more than for their actual music. Z-Ro is the antithesis of that, his music always much deeper than it appears on the surface. One of the most compelling aspects of Z-Ro is his reverent Christianity. He routinely praises God and Jesus in otherwise callously violent songs—as any ‘Ro listener knows, “Thug” in his world stands for “True Hero Under God.” This is how he sums up his Jesus-loving, human-despising worldview on the sung intro to Cocaine’s “I Don’t Give A Damn” :

I need Christ/That’s the only thing I know/I really can’t breathe right/I’m strangled by animosity from my own people/Maybe it’s hard to be nice/My face is frowned up everywhere I go/And I can’t sleep nights/I’m in my ride trying to find my foes.

He breaks things own further on what might be the mixtape’s best verse, and as good of a summation of his music as I’ve heard:

They say my music won’t make it/Cause I dont rap cars and dancing/I rap pain, poverty and fraud romancing/Who gon’ represent for that brother on death row?/And let him know whether he did it or not, God had his back from the get go/Or lil’ mama that’s hustling, risking her freedom/House of full of kids, not one of the baby daddies around and she just tryna feed ‘em/Even if she’s laying on her back for bread/Instead of talking about her, show her how to earn it without opening legs/Why my people rather point fingers and turn up their noses/Showing love is striking a match at anger so explosive/And I’m guilty just like everybody else/When I’m talking to y’all, I’m talking to self.

Powerful stuff, but not unique: these sort of deceptively optimistic humanity critiques dominate ‘Ro’s catalog. For instance Cocaine’s “Haters Got Me Wrong,” a track that if anyone bothered to work it to radio, could finally break Z-Ro on a national level. For one thing, it features Gucci Mane, and fits comfortably next to the jingles that the South’s most talked about rapper has become inexplicably popular for. It also packages ‘Ro’s persecution complex into a neat, radio-friendly ditty that doesn’t compromise him at all. If I ever hear this song on the radio, I will cry.

Beyond “Haters,” another highlight is “Move Your Body,” a pseudo-reggae track which finds ‘Ro affecting patois over a cheesy one-drop rhythm. He’s dead serious as always, but also subtly funny as well, and it’s great. The Mo City Don is so Houston that on “Rolling on Swangas,” he claims he doesn’t drink beer out of some sort of loyalty to drank (”Addicted to promethazine with codeine/What the hell is a beer?/We don’t drink that over here because that’s a no no/I never tasted a Corona but I can tell you all about that drank and that Dodo”) and tells a chick, “I won’t be making love to you to Jodeci/I’m gonna be fucking you to Street Military, baby.”

So what am I saying? Z-Ro is the most fascinating rapper going right now, precisely because he isn’t running to Youtube and Twitter to set things straight (even when there’s some stuff he probably should be trying to set straight) every five minutes, making himself tedious.

Dismissed as a 2Pac biter early in his career, Z-Ro has proven himself to be like ‘Pac not in terms of pure technique and flow but in his authenticity and willingness to be emotionally raw and open. More than Lil Boosie, he’s the true heir apparent to Pimp C, an unabashedly country rapper with a bluesman’s soul and a legendary grumpy streak, but also Bun B, always breaking down the truth in the plainest terms.