Listen to Freeway, “Heaven”

Freeway has enjoyed a long, winding and intermittently brilliant career. In the early 2000s, he was one of the key players in Roc-A-Fella's move to team up with the Philadelphia rap scene. His 2003 debut, Philadelphia Freeway, was certified Gold, shipping over 500,000 copies off the strength of Kanye West, Just Blaze and Bink! beats, features from the label's heavy hitters (including Jay Z) and Free's own unique combination of tight internal rhymes and a gruff, abrasive delivery. The buzz for his second album was collateral damage in the Jay-Dame Dash split that followed; he enjoyed a bit of a critical renaissance in 2010, when he teamed up with the producer Jake One for the Rhymesayers-issued The Stimulus Package. Yet more recently, his life hung in the balance as he fought kidney disease. So in his latest, the Merc Beatz-produced "Heaven," Freeway takes stock of the last decade-plus.