The essential Hip-Hop Review/Words: Matt Oliver
With the eight LP Eric B and Rakim vinyl reissue under our arm and tickets for both the B-Boy Championships (October, Kentish Town) and DMC World DJ Championship Finals (October, Camden, with the reigning champion being a stupefying 12 years old) in the back pocket, Rapture & Verse has a spring in its step and something special for sunburnt ears. South London producer Charles Edison, whose ‘My Name Is’, ‘Bitstorm’ and ‘Waking Up’ EP have done the business in this column down the years, lets us in on a sneak preview EP of five instrumentals from his forthcoming upcoming full length. Seamless with the sampler and as inventive as his surname demands, this exclusive preview of ‘Beats from the Seventh Floor’ reads between the lines of relaxation and tension, delivering head nodding from on high.
Singles/EPs
We love nothing more than the smell of ‘Sulphur’ in the morning. Britcore pioneers Gunshot return to set the record straight with a dramatic re-entry seizing a widescreen tracking shot and provocatively resonant lyricism. ‘2 Feel So Good’ by Tha 4orce and Poynt Blak is to acknowledge a morose head nodder looking for the change in seasons, before coming one time ‘4 The Mind & Soul’ with something to roll out red carpet lino for.
A reissue of classic Def Jux between Mr Lif and El-P brings back robotics from the lab and for the tracksuit at 45RPM, announcing the ‘Return of the B-Boy’. On his own version of Beast Mode, Mick Jenkins goes ‘Bruce Banner’ on an absolutely stone cold four minutes, taking his time before clicking into gear over a nervous lullaby. How about some hardcore? DJ Premier slamming pianos is a red rag to the bull that is Casanova, ‘Wut U Said?’ a certified dome cracker coating speakers in saliva and the kickback of a ton of guns. The ivories are quieter on Reks’ ‘Planz’, but the tirade is just as fierce, launching into ‘Bread and Roses’ with Shortfyuz with a sustained appetite for destruction.
Making headway through woozy neo-soul and underground cool, Blu, MED and Lojii supply quick on the draw rhymes for the star-dusted Oscillations project, seven tracks split between producers Dizz1, Swarvy and Teebs. Following the ‘Signs’ marked ‘snug coffee shop corner in Autumn’, Ace Clark breaks bread with Talib Kweli and Joell Oritz over some of the mellowest jazz on the menu. You probably couldn’t ask for a more Atmosphere track than ‘Make It All Better Again’, their requisite, relatable, days of our lives bitter sweetness getting lighters up and devotees swaying across the land. If you’ve ever wondered what the greatest hits of Slick Rick and Audio Two would sound like in an episode of Peanuts, wonder no more – Will C’s ‘Don’t Break Down’ re-houses a couple of old skool classics with folk-B-Boy whimsy.
Albums
Filled with gastro quotable, Scran Cartel nominate themselves as ‘Blue Plaque Candidates’. Master chefs MNSR Frites and Benny Diction stack up and snack on salivary stimulation, joined at the table by Oliver Sudden, Chemo, Morriarchi, Downstroke and more. Primarily smooth with a piquant palette rising from under the tongue, it’s a great, belt-loosening spread grilling you with much more than just a bunch of culinary one-liners.
Behind ‘The Purple Door’ you’ll find boss hogs Juga-Naut and Sonnyjim, spreading their rule over the Midlands and beyond with celebratory funk and status elevation prepared to take it outside when desired. Their usual, indomitable personas on the mic never skimp on Michelin-starred quality – a buffet of rhymes to return to, if you will – and they still aren’t the ones to test if you think they’re pushing their luck.
If you need sharp, accurate, dark and clean UK hip-hop, give the secret knock and ask for ‘617 Black Label’, where you’ll be met by Heavy Links’ Habitat. Moving like a safecracker slipping detection, Kuartz, Evil Ed, El Tel, DJ Obsolete and Cappo all keep a watch out for a rhymer whose strength is all in the stealth, smooth enough to make sure bad boys stay silent. ‘Crowns and Camo’ is the coat of arms for UK grafter Reds, an unapologetic spitter with an East Anglian ear for rocking clubs to their core. The album doesn’t get more complicated than that, posing crossover questions without dilution or losing any firepower, and riding basslines to turn spines to jelly. For as long as the sun stays out, this one will pose a threat. Man-machine rhymes and boom bap vectors mean a straight ahead onset of the Plague. ‘Where’s the World Gone?’ is the question of Xeno and Secondson, rising phoenix-like to dominate the skyline with a dominant distaste. Powerful stuff.
Napoleon da Legend and Giallo Point cause a ‘Coup D’Etat’, casual gangsterisms unflinching when reporting the unspeakable and the opulent, and the latter’s signature of taking soap opera themes down dark alleys until they’re shook for the rest of their days. ‘Societal Pressure’ starring Micall Parknsun, is the album’s significant turn for the worse. We still need a ‘Resolution’, so Paten Locke engineers a seven-track remix of 2017’s Perceptionists reunion, with an added bonus original. Putting Akrobatik and Mr Lif in the fresh new light of ‘Low Resolution’ sometimes sounds unerringly familiar – there’s a feeling the three have been discussing what’s left on Def Jux’s post-millennium to-do list. Additional subtle switch-ups create a high quality cross referencing.
For those that like their hip-hop on the verge of sleepwalking, Kev Brown offers you his ‘Homework’, the low-key exertions of a distracted doodler. Smoke filled listening booths are the target for retrained funk, sometimes done brusquely, other times with kid gloves, to the tutelage of a scholarly-sleepy voice “looking at the credits: if it says Kev Brown – get it”. The restless soul of Jeremiah Jae under his Daffi guise – fractured, hazy, clammy, intense, and unaffected – sharpens razors as night time therapy. A mind illuminated at the same it can shift backwards, processes and destabilises folk, funk, beats and pieces to a happy medium where he’d “rather be underrated than over-hyped”. Both are given a rude awakening by Q-Unique’s lesson in roach-stomping street cinema: ‘The Mechanic’ is all dramatic strings, drums of death and Arsonist threats never to be taken lightly.
Rapture & Verse: January 2017: Shadow The Jewels, Torb The Roach…
January 23, 2017
HIP-HOP REVUE
Words: Matt Oliver
Happy new year to the gazillion followers of Rapture & Verse, jumping on some previously unpulled Christmas crackers and wading into the New Year like the flyest of flyweights – after all, this is the season where Soulja Boy and Chris Brown (including a Mike Tyson diss record) and 50 Cent versus Riff Raff are taking it upon themselves to pick up from where 2016 left off. January cabin fever already? You can choose upcoming UK appearances from Drake, KRS One, Loyle Carner and Rae Sremmurd, or follow the I Love 90s hip-hop tour, with Coolio, Salt n Pepa and Vanilla Ice headlining.
Singles/EPs
Sounding like he actually enjoyed the clusterfuck that was 2016, Jam Baxter’s ‘Teeth Marks’/’Soi 36’, to the sound of Chemo dredging the depths, is an intriguing yet debilitating start to the year. Micall Parknsun ‘Practicing Tag Team Moves’ lets you know you are now rocking with the best, Jehst and Durrty Goodz joining in the belligerence to snap barbells. Lucid Logic’s ‘Falling into Winter’ EP – “our gift to you as we make the transition from Fall to Winter” – is not exactly the simple comfort blanket as appears advertised, Illogic and Lucid Optics providing a boiling pot of ideas and colours. Quelle Chris both flips and upholds hip-hop egotism on ‘Buddies’, Godz Chyld’s ‘Crazy’ vividly illustrates street psychosis that won’t fade, and Reef the Lost Cauze beats his chest with authority as funk fire ‘Grizzly’ matches the talk with the walk.
Instrumental funk that’ll get you stretching your hamstrings for auditions as both ‘floor-burning B-boy and crime fighter from when men were men?’ That’ll be DJ DSK’s 7” pair ‘Lamine’ and ‘I Know You Got Sole’, the boxfresh sneaker freak laced by Mystro. A pensive EP of head down beats, chopping folk as needle fluff dictates, dives through the back of the wardrobe in the name of guarded headphone instrumentalism: L’Orange’s ‘Koala’ EP challenges the cute and cuddly. Meanwhile, Torb The Roach & Floppy McSpace’s dope ‘Tusen Baht’ turns a foreign film dub into a hoodlum’s magic carpet ride, and Nottz conducts his own ghetto Fantasia for Stik Figa and Elzhi to make their ‘Down Payment’ substantial.
The epitome of impetus, Jermiside and L-Marr the Starr air it all out on six track soul nourishment ‘God Bless the Child’ that will both stroke your ego and shake you by your shoulders. Oddisee begins his next critically acclaimed year by sprinting out the gate with ‘Things’, a most spry guru of the groove. Of an older vintage, The Beatnuts’ ‘Off the Books’ – that gangster flute lick with Big Pun ripping it up – and Too $hort, in typically mild-mannered form on the Lil Jon-produced ‘Blow the Whistle’, both get 7” second winds begging for your shopping basket. Corleone holidaying in the sun from Oh No, Tristate & Evidence takes an ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’, some of that old Wu-Tang grit from Masta Killa, Redman and Method Man rocks a ‘Keep It Thoro’-style bruiser and sweeps ‘Therapy’ through a three minute snowstorm, and a familiar heart-stopping boom bap whirlwind from Endemic allows Bankai Fam to smash into the calendar ahead.
Albums
In case you’ve been hibernating to this point, Run the Jewels dropped ‘RTJ3’ at Christmas and have already gone close to making 2017 null and void in terms of competition coming close. Their gunfingers-n-gold chain bravado unsheathes another shedload of quotable, tripping the switch to consistently controlled explosions dialling in their sub-sci-fi, slyly evolving short shrift. Extending the telekinetic chokehold of the previous two albums (and why shouldn’t they? – if it ain’t broke…), El-P and Killer Mike are finding hip-hop’s throne at the top table most comfortable.
Taking a New Year’s trip to ‘Paranoid City’, the unnerving calm of Sleaze and Sonnyjim sparks a dangerous combination of smoked out and razor sharp. Lead by the immaculate ironman ‘Lobster Bisque’ and with a supreme cast on the boards (Reklews, Illinformed, Sumgii, Sam Zircon), this is true eyes-on-the-prize hip-hop shot through with the everyday, personas split between callous opportunists and kingpins at play. Take it home at your first opportunity.
A similar character assassination (as well as some of the same production personnel) can be aimed at Lee Scott, whose scallywagging ‘Nice Swan’ is of a loaded nonchalance maxing out the Blah Records patent lining hip-hop’s underbelly. Snivelling between unharmed shrugging and expressly not giving a fuck, Scott reveals the great squalor of opening track ‘Bootl£gliving’, a succession of quality snides, and insomnia-battling technicality “stepping on your dreams with elephant-sized feet”. Perfect to combat the bite of January with.
‘The Madness’, while only allowing momentary folly, is Attikus kicking no frills lessons, knuckling down while he knuckles up. Out of Vancouver with a touch of the Midwest, the niceness of his nitty gritty puts hoods up, but then tightens the drawstring to noose-like levels. The golden touch of MidaZ is rarely a subtle one, a chew-up-and-spit-out emcee with a flow rarely resting between scoffs, making ‘Loops Two’ a thorough boost to the bicep. Working around funk with money on its mind while twirling a gun round his finger, it’s an LP maintaining inescapable intimidation at all times. To be fair, both pale in comparison to the monocle and tweed parody of ‘Professor Elemental & His Amazing Friends’, sergeant major styling sounding like a block party thrown by Tom Caruana for the Downtown Abbey massive. Chocks away, tally-ho, and so on.
Given hip-hop’s obsession with the finer things in life, it takes someone like Cab Cabernet to step it up into something aristocratic. ‘Krushed Grapes: Harlem Vintage’ sees the ex-Maspyke member swirling bouquets of beats and reeling off rhymes from the wine list, only dealing in the dapper. Strap your gators on, cos this is slick. Blowing impressive fresh air into your ears are Benny Diction and Blue Buttonz, a UK-SA connect on cruise control for ‘Button Up’ where confidence breeds optimism – even at its sternest, its vibe of yearning is something to sidle up to. eMCee Killa, MNSR Fries, Luca Brazi and Elliot Fresh come along for the smoothest of rides. Yet another Statik Selektah casting session remixes ‘The A3C’ series, wrapping Dave East, Action Bronson, The Underachievers, Mick Jenkins and Vince Staples in new threads frayed from all the shoulder brushing.
Run-DMC’s self-titled debut gets a reformat; VIP hip-hop that’s a different world away as it churned up all before it, the primal avant-garde of crunching drum machines and scratches, rawk riffs and full steam tag teamin’ with a brand new attitude, is a stark reminder as much as a shot of nostalgia.
Free to download, Giallo Point adds a fresh lick of majestic menace to the aggravations of Percee P, Nas, KRS-One, Shabazz the Disciple, and a daring flip of OC’s signature switchblade. ‘The Remixes’ practises the ski mask way with some fast life coasting – do not make one false move. A massive ode to real hip-hop demanding you respect his hustle, Optimystic’s two-disc, 32-track ‘Day of the Guiding Light’/’Followed by the Shadow’ finds its lane and never swerves. The Aussie emcee makes his buoyancy loud and clear, that in spite of recruiting a mass regiment of hired guns and old skool soldiers – Jeru the Damaja, Killa Priest, Chip Fu, Krazy Drayz, Mr Cheeks, Keith Murray – is a one man army revering the essence.
Mixtapes
You can never go wrong with a Donnie Propa mixtape. After tributes to Masta Ace and J Dilla, ‘Straight from the Crate Cave’ honours all that is golden aged in the garden of Pete Rock. It’s the full spectrum of the Chocolate Boy Wonder that’ll have you auto reversing in no time. Certainties in life: death, taxes, and the freshness of J-Live. ‘At the Date of this Writing’ – tagline: ‘advocate dope’ – offers more soaring standards of enlightenment, maximising damning indictments and wordplay to get your grey cells cramming. Only seven tracks only, it’s the first of a series of one-man mixtapes to put you in a thinker’s pose.
Got a twin tape ghetto blaster for Christmas? Get ‘Cuts for the Boombox’ on it and watch the blockbuster haul from Oso Blanco & Matt Kuartz start rocking and tripping from your shoulder. Don’t forget to rewind. Neatly finishing up this month, DJ Skarface puts DJ Shadow beats underneath Run the Jewels wrath for a well executed 20 minute mash up to get everyone talking.
Maximise your browsers for M- Dot’s life through a lens, Jabee’s face-off, and Geechi Suede getting grooves on.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 