KEATON MYRON Treats “Cruise Control” Like a Song Worth Sitting With

“Cruise Control” runs just under four minutes, and it uses every one of them. This is hip-hop that would rather ride than shout. KEATON MYRON credits Queen Ivory on the record and Yung Nab on the beat. Spotify and Apple still list the single under his name alone. We kept his credits anyway, because that is how he talks about the people in the room with him. What we love is how little he oversells it. The song does not try to win an argument. It just stays in motion.

Boston already heard it that way. In the first days of September, WBCA-LP 102.9 put “Cruise Control feat. Queen Ivory” on New Local Boston Block, the show that collects music submitted by artists around Massachusetts. Community radio is not a victory lap. It is a neighbor putting your record on. That felt right for a Dorchester songwriter who still talks about the work like it belongs to the block he came from.

He was born in the inner-city Dorchester neighborhood, and he does not sand that off. He writes about escaping the rise and falls, then showing up anyway: as a hip-hop artist, as a songwriter who has been cutting records and hooks for more than a decade (R&B, pop, or rock if that is what the song needs), and as someone who put his own name on a clothing line and a cleaning business so the hustle has more than one door. We are not here to sell either business. They just tell you how seriously he takes staying independent.

Before the streams, that independence looked like CDs in his hand at gas stations and malls, talking to whoever would stop. “Cruise Control” is a return. He never really left the work. He just had to learn the new room, and he talks about streaming the way someone talks about a door that finally opened again.

That seriousness has a motto. LIFE equals living in full events. In July he gathered that idea into an album, LIVING IN FULL EVENTS (LIFE), a run of records with names like “Melanin,” “Loyalty,” and “History Supreme.” He still laughs that it should have been all singles. You can hear why. The album sounds like a week of work he refused to leave in the drafts folder.

If you only have one song, take “Cruise Control.” It arrived August 27, a little after the album, and it is the one he is proudest to put in front of new listeners. Sit with it. Then go back to LIFE if you want the longer week. We keep coming back to how plainly he means the motto. This is a Boston record that leaves you a little more willing to stay with someone who is still building.