LaRussell turned his “America’s Got Talent” audition into a Bay Area showcase.

Appearing on the national stage Tuesday, June 16, the Vallejo rapper performed “I’m From the Bay” with a group of young local musicians and advanced to the next stage of the NBC competition.

“I’m LaRussell. I’m from Vallejo, California, the Bay Area,” he told the judges before the performance, “and I’m here with my community. I brought a bunch of Bay Area kids that look like me, and feel like me, and sound like me, and grew up where I grew up to share this experience with me.”

In the segment, he described going straight to work at UPS after high school and later feeling as if he had “lost the sense of possibility” in his music.

“No one was looking to sign me, so in lieu of the labels, I really went to the people who were showing up every day for me: my community,” he said. “I spent the last I had, (and) me and my friends, we end up building a live performance platform at home in Vallejo.”

In recent years, LaRussell has paired his hyphy-inspired sound with a pay-what-you-can model, school visits, local collaborations and performances designed to give young Bay Area artists a stage.

On “America’s Got Talent,” he brought that hometown format to a much larger room.

The performance featured “I’m From the Bay,” the regional anthem that has become a staple of his shows and has helped carry him through a fast-moving year.

He performed at Outside Lands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park last summer, appeared as part of Super Bowl festivities earlier this year throughout the region, including serving in the house band during the game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, and signed a deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation ahead of the game.

The “AGT” judges acknowledged that the audition was not technically perfect but praised the feeling behind it.

“You’ve got real camaraderie,” Mel B said. “You all seem like friends and family, and you’re doing it all for the right reasons.”

“I really love this audition,” Simon Cowell said. He also praised the group for bringing together performers of different ages.

“Every one of you popped, but then together, you became as one,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of act I was praying would come on the show.”

LaRussell and his crew received yes votes from all four judges, sending them forward in the competition. The show airs Tuesdays on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock.

“Being here is really important because I got little homies with me, Bay Area kids who never got these opportunities,” he said backstage. “Every time we do something that’s impossible, we show that it’s possible.”

The national spotlight follows a turbulent spring for the Vallejo rapper.

In March, LaRussell deactivated his social media accounts after backlash over an unreleased song that referred to Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as “heaven-sent.” He later defended the lyric as a reflection on the range of human behavior, not an endorsement of harmful figures.

Tuesday’s “AGT” appearance returned the focus to the version of LaRussell that has made him one of the Bay Area’s most recognizable independent artists. Asked what the group would do next, a member of LaRussell’s crew kept the answer simple.

“Get better,” he said.

*SOURCE BY https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/music/articles/bay-area-rapper-larussell-earns-213145165.html