Monolith Cocktail Blog

Hip-Hop Revue: Matt Oliver





Singles/EPs

A bouquet of beats, Cupid-sent cuts, and rhymes to make your headboard rock – it’s the post-Valentine’s instalment of Rapture & Verse for all you horndogs. Legendary London Posse rhymer Bionic returns as the GreenCryptoKnight, showing you never lose your superpowers as he tears into Jazz T and Zygote’s face slapping, emerald-vinyled ‘Superman’, before adjusting the slicked back specs and tie look on the sombre ‘It Set In Stone’. Circling the drain and enjoying the sensation of tenterhooks snagging the skin, Press1, Sylla B and Dr Syntax face up to the facts of ‘Smartphone Zombies’, far gloomier than the amusing title insinuates. Taking you to down to ‘Suicide City’, where the grass is decidedly not greener and you can decide for yourself about the girls, Onoe Capone turns on the rapid fire with nothing to lose as the “bad guy that’s misunderstood”.





Bonus heat from Nolan the Ninja on the quiet storm ‘IMG’ slickly goes from casual retrospective to show-n-prove tying you up in knots. On some grimy underdog biz, Lee Ricks grits his teeth fully aware that ‘Life’s a Bitch’, fired up by being fed up, peering over the edge to BigBob’s fatefully wistful nodder. Similar grit out of necessity is displayed by the granite-carved David May, right on time when grinding hard on ‘Black Box’ with Lake Indigo pairing Celtic wonder with bass pushing the reds. Yamin Semali passionately defining what it means to be ‘Immortal’ comes with strings leaping from the speakers and a banquet of soul food for thought. Nothing but honest energy on seven amped tracks from DJ Nu-Mark, Slimkid3 and Austin Antoine creates a ‘TRDMRK’. Beats and rhymes loosen the screws on your speakers and make the front row spring-loaded, with Guilty Simpson and Dillon Cooper coming through for the jump-ups.






Albums

Round four of the Czarface chronicles, this time with Ghostface Killah in the guest hot seat. There are times when an isolated Tony Starks feels like a fourth wheel/fifth Beatle – 7L & Esoteric 1, Wu-Tang Clan 0 – but compared to some of his more recent long players his appetite on ‘Czarface Meets Ghostface’ is well up. In amongst the usual play-your-position hurricane of uppercut-landing beats and career-ending 16s from the cipher to the comic book store, is confirmation of what an amazingly consistent emcee Esoteric is. Don’t expect Czarface to relinquish their infinite lives status any time soon.





The unquenchable thirst for blood that motivates Ramson Badbonez, makes ‘Mic Day the 13^th’ a date to both revere and fear. RB’s considered decapitations, referencing all your favourite madmen, accomplish carnage with the level-headedness of a double agent whose shift changes under a full moon. While beats go bump in the night, a pokerfaced accomplice of the slasher going about his business, it’s a very British campaign of murder-murder-kill-kill.





You are about to witness the strength of street knowledge. The ‘G.A.W.D.’ complex of Joker Starr is his usual bustling style putting an F word to what you heard, hitting you with a bunch of robustly educational reducers set up by Micall Parknsun with a Blaxploitative nod on the boards. Jack Jetson and Illinformed are the ushers to ‘Strange Cinema’, tuneful head nodders galore until necks feel swollen, and an impactful flow with very little histrionics, even when “I lost my mind, now I found it, but it’s missing bits”: a watertight combination. The latest round of two minute warnings from Bisk, sticky, lo-fi claustrophobia from a peak NYC housing project, makes you squint through the abrupt ‘Gunsmoke’: an absolutely deadly spell of fully clipped relaxation.





Your neckline firmly in his sights, Pitch 92 runs a tight ship in representing ‘3^rd Culture’ with a steady hand at the wheel. The Manchester producer must’ve sprinkled some sort of emcee catnip in the booth however, as he brings out some excellent performances from Jehst, Kashmere, Sparkz, Fliptrix, Foreign Beggars, the Four Owls and more. While there’s no doubting that the guests would have come through, you have to give credit to Pitch on the boards for giving them the right and clean balance of canvas to do so.





Seethingly succinct and planning your downfall at his most matey, Rick Fury isn’t quiet in giving his targets what for, signalling the ‘Death of Autumn’ from the North East. Expertly manoeuvring soulful strike-outs from DJ ADS, in tune with the changing colour of the leaves and cannily reworking a trance classic on the album’s finale, Fury intertwines the mutual exclusivity of a simmering glare and a playful bounce to his rhymes, suggesting that if you make yourself comfortable, don’t do overdo it. An emcee able to cancel all challengers.

Boom bap, original rap: Bronx Slang’s self-titled album systematically sorts the wheat from the chaff. On paper their method is foolproof: high protein funk prone to espionage (and from surprise sources), mic-crumbling rhymes, 11 tracks, tag team performance, concepts and comment, plentiful lines to rewind…if all of this sounds overly nostalgic at pains to keep it real, Jerry Beeks and Miggs are more sages than saviours, proving you don’t have to settle for what’s supposedly trending. Proper hip-hop citizenship.





How do you like your eggs in the morning? Jazzy, sunny side up and with plenty of snap? Remulak’s plate of ‘Scrambled Eggs’ gets a dusting down and offers an instrumental challenge to any plucky master of ceremonies, doing very nicely for itself when you’re taking a break from putting on the Ritz and wearing spats with a swoosh. Most dapper, and no faking either. A decade’s worth of Oliver Sudden in 46 minutes is a fine flick through the racks that sails down like the first pint of summer. The ‘10 Year Mixtape’, put together by Downstroke and featuring assists from Luca Brazi, Sam Zircon and Ill Move Sporadic, is guaranteed to remove all accumulated crud from your ears: pretty much unskippable.

Presenting old skool rules from Positive K and MC Lyte, and the greatness of the Train Robbers.








Words: Matt Oliver