Magnum OPUS

The case workers for Guinness are still reviewing the tapes, but we can expect an official announcement soon.  It's (just about) official now: Michigan's music community can claim our local emcee to be a World Champion in long-winding rhyming.

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In the meantime, you can hear his more concise presentations (of rap songs to be featured on his forthcoming Melancholy EP) at the Old Miami this Friday.

With 2010's Serotonin EP and the forthcoming 9-track Melancholy EP, it's expected that Marcus Morgan would be a stormily emotional hip-hop artist, likely happy one second, it would seem, but easily drawn down into a shade-drawing pensiveness. But through music, rhyme-writing and his recent collaborations with producer Aaron Stephens, Morgan, as Magnum Opus, uses those occasional dips as quasi-masochistic driving-forces to thus bring himself back up to the surface with the most heartfelt and meticulously crafted rap song he can muster, with sensibilities for the soulful grooves of Motown and an old-school East-Coast rapper-reverence, Morgan, as Opus, puts all his personal stuff out onto a song, not holding back, pretty much, on anything.

A Magnum Opus, for any artist, is their pinnacle creative achievement. "As a hip-hop 'artist,'" says Morgan, "I try to make every song I write better than the last, as if it really was my Magnum Opus."

He readily admits himself to a be a 'Melancholy' person. "But," he says, "according to Greek philosophers, the Melancholy's are also known to be perfectionists, and I am exactly that. Which would help explain what's going on with my long awaited album and why it's taken me 4 years to complete..."

The Attempt at breaking this record saw Morgan starting at 9:00 a.m. and going on towards 10:30 at night. "My reason for the attempt was not just to get the award but to help bring the spotlight to Detroit," says Morgan, who, after spending his early life moving often (to a handful of states, starting out from Ithaca NY and later attending five different high schools, it wasn't until he finally settled in metro Detroit until he could feel a sense of pride, belonging, community. " I work as a manager at a group home for youth with disabilities such as Autism, bipolar disorders etc.  One thing that I wanted to prove to the residence I work for is to follow your dreams 'cause anything is possible."

Still, it's been a rough for Morgan, I can tell you... marking the passing of three elderly family members as well as overcoming considerable legal woes. But he used this all as a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" motivator and feels, today, stronger and more mature as a man and hip-hop artist. He feels Melancholy, despite its title, will be his most positive batch of songs ever recorded and released.

"Last week," Morgan said, "a well known website (RecordSetter.com) announced me as the World Record holder for the "Worlds Longest Hip-Hop freestyle. But, Guinness is still reviewing the tape."

His record-claim's case worker is a bit tied up this month so it will take a couple more weeks to get the official Guinness response.