25 for 25: an alternative hip-hop retrospective
December 17, 2025
Matt Oliver’s Choice Hip-Hop Releases of 2025
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist ‘Mercy’ (Backwoodz Studioz)
Armand Hammer = uncommon carnage and luxuriously slow violence, where “everything justified when you’re starving, right?” Challenging Alchemist time signatures give the MPC twisted blood, finding the unfazed ELUCID and billy woods counteracting with formidable, structurally-dismissive street riddles and artisan rambling from beyond off-the-top. In a game of who’ll blink first, a band of drizzly soft rock head nodders (‘Peshawar’ and ‘Calypso Gene’ reflecting ALC’s work on Evidence’s ‘Unlearning Vol.2’), turn the page in a surreal, open-ended world filtering between pure, “aura matte black” menace, Alchemist looping on his merry way and a kind of spectral connection/disconnect (‘Nil By Mouth’ and the magnificently dead of night ‘Crisis Phone’), as if ELUCID and billy woods are occupying disembodied mid-regeneration. Riding designer gangsterisms into town with bulletooth brainteasers where “every story tell a story that’s already been told” and barely allowing any breathing space, Mercy is a tour de force, probably reaching unexpected new levels of notoriety.
Batsauce ‘Echolocation’ (Full Plate)
Apollo Brown ‘Elevator Music’ (Escapism)
Lord Finesse ‘The SP 1200 Project: Sounds & Frequencies in Technicolor’ (Coalmine)
Leading the instrumental set this year, classy head nods and hip-hop time-outs from Florida’s bespoke Mexico-crossing beat director Batsauce red-carpets an instrumental set waiting for a soundtrack call-up. Echolocation darts between suited-and-booted scenarios, that even with the wind in its hair and its cufflinks checked, like the casting of a retro Bond who wants a Blaxploitation assignment via some folky replenishment, doesn’t forget the requisite thump of the breaks.
‘Elevator Music’ doesn’t do the creamy, calming creations of Apollo Brown any disservice; it’s his long established craftsmanship and detail, politely shushing vocals (few would be worthy of having the mic passed to them anyway – Bronze Nazareth a worthy accomplice on July’s collaborative LP ‘Funeral for a Dream’). Summoning the fading of summer with autumn leaves paving the way, whispered realisations of it being better to have loved and lost than not at all, and palm tree flutters found in finessed keys, this is a resplendently solemn, Michigan state of mind.
Legendary Bronx boardsmith and Diggin in the Crates PhD Lord Finesse keeps the boom bap simple and uncluttered with his weapon of choice, not forgetting the omnipotent sleigh-bell and horn stab combo that any emcee worth their salt sought out in the 90s. The SP1200 Project lets its warm elements breathe in the fresh air of the streets, creating smooth joints and vibes that cliques will want to huddle around and call their own, and whose exclamation points snap on instrumentals for cold calculations and dramatic entrances. Both a preservation and cracking open of a boom bap time capsule.
BlackLiq & Dub Sonata ‘Much Given Much Tested’ (Dub Sonata)
Blackliq has got prime previous with Monolith Cocktail after 2023’s Choice Is A Chance and The Lie, that mercilessly intelligent cackle-drawl from Virginia (‘I’m not a musician, I’m a conduit’) pulling New York’s Dub Sonata into his orbit. Production regularly resembles a marching orchestra bundled down the wrong side of the tracks, thrust down mystical rabbit holes. While ’10 Black Commandments’ is a smart re-up of Biggie’s classic shopping list to live by, the key here is the ferocity of rhymes that are comfortable in loosening the armour. ‘Traumatized’, ‘Me Too’ and ‘The Ride’ put everyone on an even footing, and ‘Rockwood’, with a combustible mixture of pride, defiance and bitterness, reminisces on the crest of sweeping black & white movie strings. Rugged, ruthless (the title track issues the mother of all bruises) and with rich trains of thought, Blackliq going for self ends up as catharsis everyone can tap into.
Black Milk & Fat Ray ‘Food of the Gods’ (Computer Ugly)
Detroit dream team business overdue a re-up after 2008’s The Set Up, Food of the Gods is ripe for metaphors about being a feast of beats and rhymes. And rightly so, with that Fat Ray stare down, fuck-around-and-find-out flow, and Black Milk’s production that’s customarily funk & soul-rich. An anxious patina runs through the LP’s early stages, before the Gods open the throttle (literally, on the road-ready ‘CANE’) and pop the cork so that swirls of colour mingle with record crate dust catching the light. Milk’s expressiveness and Ray’s staunch stance, elevated further (while inversely feeling looser) during the album’s latter stages, brokers a laser-like focus, as if every 16 is a business deal, reflected in the short 11-track time. Therefore, there’s no need for overcooking – just know the recipe and let it set, with Guilty Simpson, Danny Brown and Bruiser Wolf passing through a prize pick-me-up for your palette.
Buck 65 ‘Keep Moving’ (Bandcamp)
Packing 31 tracks into 50 minutes, prolific Canadian vet Buck 65 acts as someone whose thumb is constantly hovering above the pause button in the hope his mixtape can become local currency. Dressed in old skool garb (more a Beastie Boys tracksuit than a gold chain and fat laces) and where keeping it real reflects the joy of receiving a Bandcamp payment – also seeing his leftfield standing way off into the distance – it’s no problem that some of the samples and breaks you’d have heard umpteen times before. The craft of Buck’s transitions is twofold: there’s the undeniable funkiness of his sub two-minutes throwdowns, and his unphased, Ugly Duckling-meets-Paul Barman nerdiness (“hip but I’m not pelvic…I’m Robin Hood giving the nerds their lunch money back”), knowing when rhymes need a natural full stop and pause for thought after racking up rat-a-tat word associations. Always engaging, Keep Moving does indeed make you wonder where’s he gonna turn next.
Cappo ‘Houses’ (Plague)
Cappo’s subtle advancement of the art continues. In the aftermath of STARVE and Canon, Houses has Nottingham’s elite kitchen sink dramatist rhyming, daft as it sounds, more from A to B (though no less expressively or bloody-mindedly, as he does on the bit-between-teeth follow-up ‘ITO’), rather than going off on name-dropping tangents. Understandably so perhaps, given the gravity of the subject matter in this ode to domesticity and its surrounding killjoys. Sleepless nights, debt collectors, personal loss, striving to defeat stacked odds, provider’s pride and just ‘being’, and where the overlapping of all of these activates the closing in of walls – the ghosts seem to talk back on the greasily uneasy ‘Will We’. Ultimately, the need to have backbone and staying power to see things through is never in doubt, over suitably pensive, wary production. Coupled with some excellent HMRC-themed packaging and promo from Plague, Cappo continues to preserve his national treasure status.
Confucius MC & Bastien Keb ‘Songs for Lost Travellers’ (Native Tribe)
A definite hip-hop outlier in this list but all the better for it, a folky; lute-plucking, through-the-looking-glass rumination whose deep sighs and woodwind washes nullify outside noise while relaying being burdened and battered by it. Confucius MC’s always nice, levelheaded South London pen game allows the cradle-rocking narration of gentle lullabies (‘Little Man’) to become easily transferable to the grit of the screen-burnt real world (‘Fairytale’ finding itself “taught between the lines and the margins: life really is quite a sentence”; ‘Question Or Consume’ finding idylls pulled from under). Midlands Midas Bastien Keb sends you to catch Zs (‘It Would Speak’), his fantastical micro concertos and sub-Tolkien worlds conversely challenging you to a spiritual, danger-laden quest attached to “the burden of a heavy chain, the urgency of heavy shame”. The cocooned hush slowly develops into a more of a jazzy, beat-lead murmur, without the pretention of a poetry slam or coffee house special, as the pair craft a precious sonic compass.
Crimeapple & DJ Skizz ‘Rose Gold’ (Different Worlds Music Group)
After collaborative albums Wet Dirt and Breakfast In Hradec (both referenced on the track ‘Trifecta’), this latest, consummate gangster experience from Skizz and the never static Crimeapple is beautifully tailored as an NYC’s kingpin day-to-day – heads will roll, and stylishly so, with conviction always trumping the ostentatious. With the audacity to interpolate R Kelly (‘Taste Like Butter’) Lisa Stanfield-Notorious BIG (‘Congratulations’) and what we’re pretty sure is Skizz messing about with Wings’ ‘Jet’ on ’97 Tape Master’ – and steadfastly meaning it – Rose Gold represents cold-veined composure when there’s panic in the streets, but where there’s always time for a punchline for that extra chef’s kiss of respect. ‘Paradigms’ runs rampant, hook-less rhymes to destroy ciphers like drug rings, crystallising that subhuman/beyond emotion strand of focus that won’t stutter, but project the voice. As both promote the quiet storm ethic amidst the Blaxploitation resets, the pair then take it to the church on ‘The Pastor’s Whip’ as Rose Gold racks up the carats.
Defcee & Parallel Thought ‘Other Blues’ (Parallel Thought LTD)
One of the coolest sounding albums of 2025 – deferred from 2022 – Other Blues humbly never sets out to achieve such Holy Grail status of electric relaxation. New Jersey duo Parallel Thought achieve this by glossy funk and soul that learns to see past the red carpet light bulb flashes with reverent mastery of the MPC. The conversational grown man rhymes and down to earth done goodness of Illinois 9-to-5er Defcee (‘You Still Rap?’ downplaying status by being “not even Chicago famous”) develop into lore without ever yelling at any clouds, getting front rows straining to reach out in appreciation of his clarity and pragmatism. ‘Graduation Picture’ is a storytelling what-might-have-been highlight, while ‘Beasts’ emerges from the happy-to-be-here dwelling to apply a sabre prefix to being long in the tooth. A road trip of carefree origins before home truths start hanging heavier in the air (nothing realer than ‘Big Sisters’), Other Blues is everything that the beats-and-rhymes bedrock should be.
doseone & Steel Tipped Dove ‘All Portrait, No Chorus’ (Backwoodz Studioz)
2025’s grungiest, most super-villainous flow belongs to doseone; but those who know their Anticon archives will understand how these things work. Seemingly burying his hissing, cackle-cracked flow under bedcovers by torchlight and then capable of twisting his jowls double-time, in a Hanna-Barbera-meets-death metal fashion, doseone has long perfected the classic of sermons being at their most haywire when all seems hushed (‘Went Off’), bending the leftfield to his will (“semantics steadily setting these idiots free”) and leaving nothing to chance on the eye-popping ‘Inner Animal’, sustaining a Busta Rhymes-Sticky Fingaz hybrid. With the shakiness of a Blair Witch camcorder, Steel Tipped Dove’s production dares to dream, strikes out with forked teeth, holds its ground, and recognises every variable is fair game in keeping up with/goading doseone’s mindstates. The mad scientist writ large on ‘Epinephrine Pen’, it’s uneasy listening, but All Portrait, No Chorus will definitely prise ears open, by fair means or foul.
Farma G ‘How to Kill a Butterfly’ (High Focus)
Still posing one of the most potent, be-careful-what-you-wish-for flows, Task Force’s Farma G challenges himself on the mic after a prolonged spell producing underground heaters and artefacts, making a bold call for album of the year in January. How To Kill A Butterfly is an enjoyably bruising experience, the UK hip-hop legend shrouding himself in a fog weighing the world down which turns everything on the brink of lopsided, while muscle memory maintains the straight and narrow (‘Bearskin Coats’, ‘Classic Tech’). A technician, of the mould seemingly rubbing his eyes from slumber but whose survivor instinct never dulls, is always enlightening in staring down struggles and close-to-home tribulations (“the all consuming battle between happy and sad”). The likes of ‘Say It How You See It’ encompass Farma’s rounding up of weary troops to offer a sense of rain-lashed, underdog belonging; and his way of floating like a ‘Butterfly’ is to swarm opposition into suffocation.
Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals ‘A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears’ (Phantom Limb)
The axis of provocation and punishment – but then you shouldn’t expect anything else from a title screaming that this is not a drill. Maryland duo and Kneecap-supporters Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals are pourer of fuel on fire with the sort of rhymes that are done tolerating the world mark 2025 (“the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million – is a statistic”). Conspiracy quashing and intense namedrops are all part of the game, but their loose canon nature (“alcoholic househusband, I was made for that”) is actually heightened by genuine moments of calm, sometimes pastoral reflection/dysfunction. Quieten the vocals, and you’re subject to a warped, cut-n-shut jukebox of clppng-like static and metal blackouts, with glossy R&B, psychedelic Bond themes, OutKast-like groove and folk acoustics. Showing moments of universal appeal on the theoreticals of ‘Sometimes, Papi Chulo’, the pair pleasingly offers as much intrigue and complexity as the obvious DGAF shock value on display.
Jansport J ‘West Covina Prayer’ (All Attraction No Chasin)
Hard at work as ever through 2025 with ‘The Weight of the World’ and ‘Hard 2 Hate’ bookending this ode to California, the evergreen Jansport J pushes a local feelgood factor bathed in West Coast warmth and well, coasting, as only the Golden State knows. J’s mixboard smoothness, where cruise control supplants hydraulics, throws in a handful of 80s throwbacks stark (‘T-Top’), glossy (‘Brown Suga’) and with water pistols cocked (EDF running the cook-out of ‘$100 Soup’), and works with a juxtaposition of swaggy emcees that won’t retreat to the shade – the heat only makes them work harder (West Covina’s motto is “live, work, play”, so it checks out). It also comes with a touch of danger when the LA temperature turns slightly redder and mistier, exemplified by album highlight ‘It’s A Game’ featuring AJ Snow & Polyester The Saint. Just over half an hour long, but well worth the visit.
Lee Reed ‘Pitchforks & Torches’ (Strange Famous)
“I don’t know who needs to hear this – but you’ve been warned”. Armed with the baying mob’s titular weapons of choice, veteran Canadian Lee Reed is the classic antagonist elect going against the world’s current negative, vegetative, corrupted and fat cat-rewarding state – from cost of living to the declaration that “this ain’t rap, this is class war” and then directing the placards on ‘This Economy’ – with an outlaw status sipping liquor neat and done taking no for an answer. The sound of vengeance from producer ripple-eh-hex is rock-n-roll brawl, bang-your-head ready with a little voodoo seeping in, and it’s easy to imagine Reed marching from town to town in a swirl of backwater dust and scorched vocals, pistols cocked and movement mobilised to the jangle of cowboy spurs. No pauses for thought or reflection, this is undiluted and unapologetic: just as the world likes it right now.
LMNO & D-Styles ‘Three Mimes & An Elephant’ (Perpetual Stew)
This starts with slightly American gothic/folky backwater production from Beat Junkies associate D-Styles, immediately putting this 10-track album down in the trenches. With an elephant’s turn of speed it then moves into funk delivered on the low, then into super catchy stripped back loopage, and then back again to tread on eggshells. Underground Cali stalwart and Visionaries alumni LMNO is the tale-teller whose solemn, soft-edged delivery doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly (‘Hip-Hop AF’ knows the ledge, issuing a notice to turn the screw). For when the backpack starts to weigh heavy – eyes of innocence or a thousand yard stare? – ‘Three Mimes’, featuring an appearance from the ubiquitous Blu, is an ideal after-hours soundtrack bursting into life and making the shadows dance. The lane drifts, continuing with ‘Bloody White Flags’, ‘Garlic Braid’ and its line of “diarrhoea of the mouth, it’s a vowel movement”, are unexpected sneak attacks beyond the first listen. Such more-than-meets-the-ear stage management creates an absolutely rock solid, cult listen for 2025 that’s “a masterpiece born out of catastrophe”.
miles cooke ‘ceci n’est pas un portrait’ (Rucksack Records)
2025’s slurpiest, most rottonous flow belongs to miles cooke; from the first bar the Brooklynite is great at plugging ears with cranky-to-put-it-mildly disdain on the Company Flow-themed ‘negus’, a flow baptised in dirty water or birthed in Oscar the Grouch’s trashcan. Beats get lighter and varied over the course of the LP, but cooke is not a horses for courses emcee, consequently creating a savage contradiction never skimping on syllables, as an antihero not in the business of sympathy (“just trying to keep the roof over my head daily”). The refusal to budge from his wallowing, worn down by his environs and American dreamisms so that his sneer becomes unadjustable, weaponise ‘sangria’ and ‘dismiss the fear of being you’ as two of 2025’s bleakest landscapes. It’s safe to say that you shouldn’t look at ‘…portrait’ the wrong way when cooke declares “I’m half altruistic, half horrible/but you won’t find me resting on my laurels”.
Mr Muthafuckin eXquire ‘Vol 2: The Y.O.UPrint’ (Old Soul Music)
While we’ll probably never get the sleeve to Kismet out of our head and some of the barbs on the self-titled 2019 album won’t ever be safe for work, Mr eXquire continues to quell the rage of moral panickers by continuing as an older and wiser Brooklyn headhunter. Not to say he’s downgraded to a PG13 status of adult situations, but as a leader (‘It IzwWhat it iZ’) rather than a pure troublemaker (living the most opulent gangster life on ‘Y.O.Utopia’), eXquire as ghetto Sherpa (‘The Magician’ might surprise you) hits upon one of the year’s most consistent albums in terms of no skips from first track to last. In a 43 minute ball of sweat, muscle and no little wit (the pure show and prove of ‘The Soloist’) over a funky clatter of beats from KRILL, MonkeyRad7, Griff Spex, Enoch and EV – with some bars still beyond pardoning – do as the man says: “if you want some understanding, then humbly, listen to me”.
Nacho Picasso & TELEVANGEL ‘Séance Musique’ (Last Epoch Records)
Put your hands together for Séance Musique’ Woozy with a capital ‘ooh’, Portland’s TELEVANGEL, who also came correct with Lord OLO on Demon Slayer 2 in 2025, absorbs the energy of irrepressible supersonic Nacho Picasso, whose husky wisps and horizontal, Lyrics Born-meets Mr Eon flow with a mouthful of munchies, delivers zingers by the dozen. Séance is cloud-sent, undoubtedly chill and will make your lights flicker, but through the smoke there are moments of vigilance (‘Skylar’), and Nacho’s snaking through the nooks and crannies with a preference for simple structures, is a stoner style you can still follow word for word despite sitting below the mix. ‘Toast to the Chaos’ typifies both Nacho working the axis of slack and locked on, and TELEVANGEL’s intelligent lacing of the psychedelic with sufficient anxiety. The burning of incense as a perilous pursuit is hammered home on the VHS imbalance of ‘Fly Ritchie’, featuring a surprising guest hook from Mayhem SAS.
PremRock ‘Did You Enjoy Your Time Here?’ (Backwoodz Studioz)
Of an arid drawl that barely looks up from the mic – engaging in eye contact is asking for a hiding to nothing lest he loom over you – New York’s PremRock would probably dismiss adjectives such as enigmatic and scoff at being labelled leftfield. Production from ELUCID, YUNGMORPHEUS, Blockhead, Controller 7 and more elevate their target, coming in off the beaten track with a degree of admiring lo-fi mystique smuggling a reserve of trip wires (‘Aim’s True’ sounds like Pandora’s Box being jacked open). PremRock perpetuates a recluse (“complicated man, simple needs” / “up Schitt’s creek without an either/or” / “hello darkness my old homie…you’re lucky I’m so low-key”) who won’t beckon you to come closer: so listen very carefully when he starts piling up syllables while barely giving himself a run-up (and usually within a three minute timeframe). The title may be rhetorical, but you’ll get lost in this one quickly as Backwoodz Studioz chalk up another victory.
R.A.P. Ferreira & Kenny Segal ‘The Night Green Side Of It’ (Ruby Yacht/Alpha Pup)
Aboard the good ship Ruby Yacht out of Nashville, Green represents the smoothness and disruption of jazz, a rash and a methodical finding of notes, partnered with chatting where the beats don’t go and the exacting precision of line and length. Segal’s clatter of free-jazz spitballing and the sheer fucking around of ‘Blood Quantum’, is embraced with a cocksure rebuttal of “can you find the difficulty in this style?” – the atonal and off-kilter deserving of Ferreira’s acute turns of phrase (“I emailed God once, reply came back from a Mailer-Daemon”). Showing-and-proving between feeling himself and look-what-I-can-rhyme-over, Ferreira owns the double bass dope of ‘Dazzle on the Casual’ and thoroughbred jazz hop of ‘Defense Attorney’, and has the underground pluck to chronicle the ultimate triumph in adversity of ‘The Night Dreamer’s Flu Game’. All shades of green are game when he poses conundrums and reveals fleeting vulnerability, detailing that “I’ve been everything from a poet to a punching bag, an inspiration to a coulda-had” on ‘Credentials’.
The Cool Kids ‘Hi Top Fade’ (Fool’s Gold)
Generational retro from Midwest MySpace graduates Chuck Inglish and Sir Michael Rocks. From the on-point sleeve to the title to their resumption of redressing low-rider music that they’ve been doing since 2008’s The Bake Sale, the pair still have the skills to back the B-boy stances. Drum machines locked in with monster kicks for your hydraulics (the unavoidably catchy ‘Rockbox’ – an open house party invite), interplays over jazzy recliners (‘We Got Clips’, the great ‘Cinnamon Pt.2’ flipping 50 Cent), and with more than a little mining of peak era Neptunes (‘Foil Bass’), their pick-up-and-rhyme styles bearing a slight Clipse equivalency, don’t always feel they have to lock together to form a single mouthpiece. Slick and willing to knock out frauds in a second, but also in it for a summery good time with a touch of 80s electro-fied flossing, ‘Hi Top Fade’ will cause a spike in ghettoblaster sales – “this not for airpods, you gonna need good speakers”.
The Expert ‘Vivid Visions’ (Rucksack Records)
This year’s one producer-extends-invite to underground emcee roster package belongs to Ireland’s The Expert, encouraging the everyman for himself ethos while attempting to sneak a unifying headswim through each track. From humbly funky beginnings, highlights are the prescription posse cut ‘Take A Trip’, the downright nasty, leather jacketed boom bap of Buck 65’s gangster geekin’ ‘What It Looks Like’, and the cop chase ‘Acid Test’ with its scraping, TikTok-ready percussion. It’s an 18 track whole or 18 individual stand outs without a weak moment to be found, subsequently leaving you poring over the back catalogues of the album’s contributors. Playlisters can separate from the psychedelic and the flat out, the long-gamers will revel in the back and forth of the full on and easing back. ‘Running’ provides the bridge, a slide guitar loop ridden by Andrew & Defcee, who then provides a closing, slightly more caustic commentary on ‘In The Style of Bigg Juss’. A vast yet compact collection, big on discipline and the disciplines.
Von Pea & The Other Guys ‘Putcha Weight On It’ (HiPNOTT)
A collaboration well versed in hip-hop fundamentals (see 2017’s The Fiasco), there’s much to appreciate about the quality and calibration of the loops laid down by DC’s The Other Guys – on the surface there’s nothing complicated about the funk, but then there shouldn’t be with the best snare-snapping, soul/jazz refitting boom-bap. This’ll sort stiff necks immediately in one chiropractor-sacking 32 minute appointment such is their complete measure of the MPC. Von Pea’s lyrical demeanour over this rugged luxury gambols down the street, passing through (and owning) as many street corner ciphers as possible, with a little singsong in his voice (‘Slide Off With Her Homie’) and call and response prompts at all the right points adding to his too-cool-for-school knowledge (“does music even exist without wi-fi?”) that packs a deceptive amount of heft (“don’t confuse my energy with meek, I’m making chess moves as we speak”). Add spots from Che Noir, Skyzoo, Oddisee and Tanya Morgan teammate Donwill and ‘…Weight…’ represents cracking pound for pound value.
Honourable mentions:
Open Mike Eagle – Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
TELEVANGEL & Lord OLO – Demon Slayer 2
J Littles & Kong the Artisan – Furthermore
Aupheus – High Artifice
Da Fly Hooligan – Nocturnal Hooli 2.0/3
sleepingdogs – Dogstoevsky
Brother Ali – Satisfied Soul
OldBoy Rhymes – Curly Head
Verbz & Mr Slipz – The Way FWD
Jesse The Tree – Worm in Heaven
Oh No – Nodega
Extras: Matt’s essential hip-hop soundtrack to 2025; 108 tracks that represent the last year in rap.
Matt Oliver
The Monthly Playlist: Choice Music From August 2023: GOAT, Ramson Badbonez, Jaimie Branch, Part Bat, Dave Meder ..
August 30, 2023
PLAYLIST/TEAM EFFORT
A summary of the last month on the Monolith Cocktail site
Each month Dominic Valvona curates an eclectic musical journey from all the choice releases featured on the Monolith Cocktail, with records selected from reviews by Dominic, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Andrew C. Kidd. Plus Matt Oliver’s essential hip-hop revue and a smattering of tracks we didn’t get the chance to write about for a lack of time and space.
_____TRACKLIST_____
Ramson Badbonez ‘Weight’
FRSHRZ X Tom Caruna Ft. Essa, Phill Most Chill, Clencha, Frisco Boogie, YU, Jehst, Homeboy Sandman, Willie Evans Jr., Dr Syntax, Doc Brown, Wizdom (Green Jade), Chill aka Greenzilla, Jaz Kahina, Mas Law, Koba Kane, Blade, Pavan, Seanie T, Michie One, Graziella, Watusi87, K9, Si Philli, Apex Zero, Genesis Elijah, Longusto, Nutty P, Tubby Boy, LeeN, Skillit, F-Dot-1, SKANDOUZ, Dray, Artcha, Georgious Lazakis, Dekay, Dee Lush, Briti$h, Anyway tha God, Quartz Crystallius, Lemzi, BREIS, Leo Coltrane, Jugg GTB, Slippy Skillz, Scorzayzee, Obi Joe, El Da Sensei, Whirlwind D, Dillon, Cuts From Jazz T ‘BARS 50MC – Remix’
Azalu ‘Fleshbite’
Lunch Money Life ‘Love Won’t Hide Your Fears (The Bishop And The Bunsen Burner)’
GOAT ‘Unemployment Office’
Flat Worms ‘Suburban Swans’
Part Bat ‘Okay’
Group O ‘The Answer Machine’
Black Milk ‘Downs Get Up’
Apollo Brown ‘Three Piece’
Open Mike Eagle ‘We Should Have Made Otherground A Thing’
Raw Poetic, Damu The Fudgemunk ‘The Speed Of Power’
Stik Figa, Blu ‘Uknowhut? (The Expert Remix)’
Jaimie Branch ‘Bolinko Bass’
Trademarc, Mopes, SUBSTANCE810 ‘No Huddle’
Joell Ortiz, L’ Orange ‘In My Feelings’
Kut One, Jamal Gasol ‘Stay Sucker Free’
Belbury Poly ‘The Path’
Hydroplane ‘Stars (Twilight Mix)’
Slow Pulp ‘Broadview’
Yann Tiersen ‘Nivlenn’
Rojin Sharafi ‘dbkkk’
Andrew Hung ‘Find Out’
Misya Sinista, ILL BILL, Vinnie Paz, DJ Eclipse ‘Verbal Assualt’
Verbz, Nelson Dialect, Mr. Slipz ‘Edge Of Oblivion’
Koralle, Kid Abstrakt ‘Mission’
Rhinoceros Funk, Rico James ‘Pump This’
Sa-Roc ‘Talk To Me Nice’
Elisapie ‘Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)’
MacArthur Maze, DJ D Sharp, Blvck Achilles, Champ Green, D. Bledsoe ‘Switching Lanes’
Bixiga 70 ‘Malungu’
Gibralter Drakus ‘Exode Ritual’
Dave Meder ‘Modern Gothic’
Knoel Scott, Marshall Allen ‘Les Funambules’
Vitamin G, Illinformed ‘Big Spender’
NC Lives ‘Cycle’ Candid Faces ‘Coming Home’
The Legless Crabs ‘Unstoppable’
Neon Kittens ‘Sunburn On My Legs’
En Fer ‘Mon Travail, Mon Honneur Et Ma Perseverance’
Craig Fortnam ‘All Dogs Are Robots’
Liraz ‘Bia Bia – JM Version’
Galun ‘Mirror’
Exit Rituals ‘A Fluid Portrait’
Dot Allison ‘220Hz’
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
ALBUM REVIEW/MATT OLIVER
Guillotine Crowns ‘Hills to Die On’
(Uncommon Records)
Do not read between the lines: these crowns haven’t been made to sit comfortably atop underground sovereigns. Hills To Die On is an uprising as well as an upholding of 80s-made disaster, predicting a New York-Chicago futurism that’s actually right under your fingernails, dirt and all. In orators Uncommon Nasa, whose clipped bravado, capable of coiling ad infinitum until he’s constricting your windpipe, and Short Fuze, no less strident but a case of always having to watch the quieter ones in times of distraction, Guillotine Crowns fuck up the b-boy stance and the front rows they’re liable to jump into. Dystopia may be the easy catch-all term to apply to this album of margin-ignoring hip-hop, and these are no gilded garlands on display; but when added to its deeply rooted survivalist spirit, just being without ever seeking hero status, Hills To Die On becomes music to spray skyscrapers by.
As with the Monolith Cocktail-approved, 2019 Uncommon Nasa project City As School with Kount Fif, indie/leftfield hip-hop titans Company Flow and Cannibal Ox, both of whom are referenced in rhyme, are where yardstick parallels are drawn and which give the album a weird throwback status caught in forward thinking-retro fantasy-modern living crossfire. Throw this back to times of Anticon/Def Jux etc (in which Nasa earned his stripes) and you’re hopeful for the scene all over again, thrilled by the likes of ‘Horseman Armour’ and ‘Scope of the Guillotine’ spewing out abstract angles hiding as straight lines and taking no shortcuts in unseating speakers.
The duo recognise the need to mobilise, but also the parameters of the friends/enemies axis. Whereas the resistance of ‘They Can’t Kill Us All’ is comparable to an all-for-one zombie outbreak, ‘The Product’ has Guillotine Crowns accepting the Sword of Damocles as both potential sealer of fate and a means of going for self amongst online/media minefields. Dense, dry and pretty unforgiving without being indecipherable, GC embark on “around-the-clock stakeouts to reset history” with enough ear catching references – Pelle Pelle sweatshirts, shouts to EPMD, Wu-Tang, DOOM and “Flava Flav with the 12Gauge” – to ease furrowed brows. The pertinence of their streams of consciousness will eventually emerge like a word balloon, forced into your eyeballs as a revision of the Clockwork Orange syllabus.
“My life is fast forward, while yours is a series of pauses” says the crushing headswim of ‘Rebel Crowns’, proposing the question of “do you want to be right, or do you want to be correct?” that through the wrong mic would just be look at me-level pretentious. And like any hip-hop act, underground or mainstream, the pair know the worth of a good hook that punters can take as gospel or make a tattoo of, acknowledging rap’s saviour-like status on the come up and pledging allegiance to the grind. The two leaders are joined on the mic by a bunch of street corner-dwelling savages slash town criers – Jyroscope, Duke01, Gajah, Tracy Jones, Skech185 a sometimes improbable cross-section of survivors and reinforcements to reroute the tide.
The sound of everyday anarchy is dominated by drum machines bullying backdrops like they’re about to cause the 80s music scene to splinter. Guitar chords are crowbarred if not sawn off, and holographic, peace-seeking synths become something more gothic and sinister, analogous to arcade machines becoming sentient. The programming of effects and percussion make tracks itch, irritating your inner ear. ‘Art Dealers’ sounds like ‘Brooklyn Zoo’ in a backpack. The scarily beautiful ‘Generosity’, with its damning hook sample, sounds jettisoned in space, while providing rhymes for the ages that measure the distance of returning to reality.
The dissonant ‘Bare Hands’ projects a robot uprising with the metropolis as its playground, whose hook of “I will destroy you with my bare hands…my power is limitless, you can’t come close to stopping me” both boosts and belies its Gotham-like setting, with ‘Hills’ providing a triumphant, comic book-coloured sci-fi fanfare and a chorus to leap headlong into for anyone needing a new manifesto. Rarely does the Hills… have time to check its pulse across 46 minutes; ‘Tape Deck’ tries to act dreamy, but can’t get no sleep. The industrial grind of ‘City Breathing’ is made for tank-as-low rider, and ‘Killer’, with Short Fuze calculating villainously, reaches the apex of the album’s claustrophobia living in a police state.
Hills To Die On is classic anti-socialism in the shock-of-the-new, ghettoblaster on full blast sense, though suffering the establishment, rather than just being anti-establishment, seems to be the Guillotine mindstate. All hail the Crown rulers setting standards from home to the Terrordome.
Our Daily Bread 513: Lyrics Born ‘Mobile Homies Season 1’
April 24, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/Matt Oliver
Lyrics Born ‘Mobile Homies Season 1’
(Mobile Home Recordings)
Despite the title sounding something like a caravanning show found on Channel 5, Mobile Homies from Bay Area veteran Lyrics Born makes the most of lockdown restrictions as a collaborative collection fleshing out LB’s purpose-made podcast of the same name. Much more than just a make-do stopgap, it salutes the long established Lyrics Born mantra of performance being all about entertainment and extravaganza. No variant will hold him back, manoeuvring the live show experience as a soul/R&B spectacular where you can imagine a stage filled with backing singers and musicians, spotlights and catwalks, and the promise of good, clean fun or your money back; all the while looking more and more the sharp suited fly guy to rank him alongside the likes of Bruno Mars, Andre3000 and Anderson .Paak.
Born has long held one of the most serious flows in the game, cultivating singsong flamboyance (“my shows are like a party for a bachelorette”) as a people’s champ with unquestionable underground-educated skills and a voice once sold as “like sandpaper dipped in maple syrup”. Here, his lowness (for want of a better description) into the mic is less a Chali 2na-style baritone (the stiffer delivery on ‘Misfits’ aside), but a rat-a-tat amplified whisper, an almost monotone, always chill, malleable flow from the deepest vocal chord that allows him to be cyborg-like, possessed by playing games with syllables. Contrarily, it also enables the persona of a dead-eyed charmer sans ego or sleaze, his silver-tongued devilry akin to the Fonz clicking his fingers.
Amongst the lovey-dovey expressions where heartthrob-served butter wouldn’t melt – back and forthing with himself on the Netflix & Chill-ready ‘Everyday Love’ with Prince Paul providing perky foreplay on production; cutting in on the super polished, Con Brio-lead performances of ‘Sundown’ and ‘Mistakes’ causing ‘Hey Ya’! levels of hysteria, possibly involving underwear removal – is the seething racism exposé of ‘Anti’. A tensely humid, low rider ball of high pressure agitation, brought to the fore from behind the pandemic smokescreen and pierced by Cutso’s wheezing siren infuriating like a fly out of swatting reach, it packs a chorus that intelligently dares you to holler back from the front row. Crucially in the face of such provocation, LB’s flow, taking his cue from Dr Dre’s ‘The Watcher’, is masterful in never losing its cool, its points further rammed home by Shing02, Bohan Phoenix and Dilated Peoples’ Rakaa on the remix.
In terms of routine it’s almost like LB asking for the house lights to be turned on and the band to hold fire, with the final track remix providing the encore so you definitely won’t forget the message; the savagery of this uncensored PSA under a blood red spotlight a showstopper without stopping the show dead. While not quite a case of the show must go on, ‘This Song’s Delicious’ with Sitcom Dad and Dan the Automator arrives from the Paul Barman school of jaunty verbosity doing chucklesome show-n-prove, developed from Netflix band Hello Peril from the film Always Be My Maybe. ‘Desperada’ takes the feeling of sand between your toes into the club, and ‘My City’, displaying wistful hometown pride with enough matriarchal room for interpretation, poignantly features his late Soulsides comrade and Blackalicious lifer Gift of Gab.
Enter another pertinent state-of-the-world address, this one packed with Instagram filters fiending for those thumbs ups. Over a nifty first generation grime production that Ghetts, Kano or Taz would have rinsed, ‘Enough About Me’ gets trending to the tune of crowds showing pixellated appreciation while literally keeping the action at arm’s length. Guests The Grouch and Eligh attempt to differentiate between projected and actual reality; LB does the opposite, going into overdrive like a big bucks hype machine (“I don’t want privacy, I want all y’all to see/selfie-selfie-selfie, I’m my own paparazzi”)and knowing the only way to avoid fading into obscurity is to dive in twice as hard.
While the zoom call intermissions with his collaborators quickly become skippable, the sound is so rich and accomplished (as standard), with impressive divergence, that even if the album wasn’t completely conceived over Microsoft Teams, it’s a great demonstration of how Lyrics Born can play second fiddle before stealing the show, and solidifying his claim as a great entertainer still remaining underrated.
The Monthly Playlist: February 2022: Animal Collective, Future Kult, Che Noir, Your Old Droog, Orlando Weeks…
February 28, 2022
PLAYLIST SPECIAL
An encapsulation of the last month, the Monolith Cocktail team (Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain) chose some of the choicest and favourite tracks from February. It may have been the shortest of months, yet we’ve probably put together our largest playlist in ages: all good signs that despite everything, from Covid to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, artists, bands everywhere are continuing to create.
65 tracks, over 4 hours of music, February’s edition can be found below:
That exhaustive track list in full:::
Animal Collective ‘Walker’
Modern Nature ‘Performance’
Gabrielle Ornate ‘Spirit Of The Times’
The Conspiracy ‘Red Bird’
Cubbiebear/Seez Mics ‘All Friended Up’
Dubbledge/Chemo ‘Itchy Itchy’
Dirty Dike ‘Bucket Kicker’
Future Kult ‘Beasts With No Name’
Lunch Money Life ‘Jimmy J Sunset’
Ben Corrigan/Hannah Peel ‘Unbox’
Uncommon Nasa ‘Epiphany’
War Women Of Kosovo ‘War Is Very Hard’
Ben Corrigan/Douglas Dare ‘Ministry 101’
Sven Helbig ‘Repetition (Ft. Surachai)’
Ayver ‘Reconciliacion Con La Vida’
Lucidvox ‘Swarm’
Provincials ‘Planetary Stand-Off’
Wovenhand ‘Acacia’
Aesop Rock ‘Kodokushi (Blockhead Remix)’
Junglepussy ‘Critiqua’
Tanya Morgan/Brickbeats ‘No Tricks (Chris Crack) Remix’
Buckwild ‘Savage Mons (Ft. Daniel Son, Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon & Eto) Remix’
Che Noir ‘Praises’
Koma Saxo w/Sofia Jernberg ‘Croydon Koma’
Medicine Singers/Yontan Gat/Jamie Branch ‘Sanctuary’
Black Josh/Milkavelli/Lee Scott ‘Die To This’
Funky DL ‘I Can Never Tell (Ft. Stee Moglie)’
Mopes ‘Home Is Like A Tough Leather Jacket’
ANY Given TWOSDAY ‘Hot Sauce (Ft. Sum)’
Split Prophets/Res One/Bil Next/Upfront Mc/0079 ‘Bet Fred’
Nelson Dialect/Mr. Slipz/Vitamin G/Verbz ‘Oxford Scholars’
Immi Larusso/Morriarchi ‘Inland’
Homeboy Sandman ‘Keep That Same Energy’
Wax Tailor/Mick Jenkins ‘No More Magical’
Ilmiliekki Quartet ‘Sgr A*’
Your Old Droog/The God Fahim ‘War Of Millionz’
Ramson Badbonez/Jehst ‘Alpha’
Ghosts Of Torrez ‘The Wailing’
Pom Poko ‘Time’
Daisy Glaze ‘Statues Of Villians’
Orange Crate Art ‘Wendy Underway’
Seigo Aoyama ‘Overture/Loop’
Duncan Park ‘Rivers Are A Place Of Power’
Drug Couple ‘Linda’s Tripp’
Ebi Soda/Yazz Ahmed ‘Chandler’
Brian Bordello ‘Yes, I Am The New Nick Drake’
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets ‘Bubblegum Infinity’
Steve Gunn ‘Protection (Ft. Mdou Moctar)’
Jane Inc. ‘Contortionists’
Black Flower ‘Morning in The Jungle (Ft. Meskerem Mees)’
Jo Schornikow ‘Visions’
The Goa Express ‘Everybody In The UK’
Pintandwefall ‘Aihai’
Thomas Dollbaum ‘God’s Country’
Crystal Eyes ‘Don’t Turn Around’
Glue ‘Red Pants’
Super Hit ‘New Day’
Legless Trials ‘Junior Sales Club Of America’
Monoscopes ‘The Edge Of The Day’
Alabaster DePlume ‘Don’t Forget You’re Precious’
Orlando Weeks ‘High Kicking’
Carl Schilde ‘The Master Tape’
Bank Myna ‘Los Ojos de un Cielo sin Luz’
Park Jiha ‘Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans’
Simon McCorry ‘Interstices’
Our Daily Bread 495: Dubbledge & Forest DLG ‘Ten Toes Down’
February 16, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/MATT OLIVER
Our resident hip-hop lexicon and expert Matt Oliver is back with a new review. Matt’s been busy with his own music pr business of late, but been selecting choice cuts form the hip-hop scene for the Monolith Cocktail’s monthly playlists. We’re glad to have him back on writing duties with this review of the recent UK rap duo of Dubbledge and Forest DLG.
Dubbledge & Forest DLG ‘Ten Toes Down’
(Potent Funk) 10th February 2022
By definition Ten Toes Down means to totally commit to something, and Watford emcee Dubbledge has always shown devotion to the home cause, an energiser helping mangle the angles of hip-hop as part of LDZ and Problem Child and showing off all his resplendent showmanship as ‘The Richest Man In Babylon’. Quite how Ten Toes Down became a lost album is a mystery; one assumes the standard suspect of industry foul play was at work to deny Dubbledge another chance to blow your house down, though a couple of dust-offs within a compact package suggest a reconfiguration of his geezer-ish cunning done as a wink and a smile and living by the seat of his pants. His is the sort of flow that stores cheekfuls of rhymes akin to an iconic trumpet player, gargling them about the place and working every last facial muscle before leaving the front row festooned in comedic phlegm and flavour.
It’s this force of personality, providing the sort of unsubtle putdowns still worthy of an opponent’s applause, which loves nothing more than the spotlight being turned on full whack, but knowing the prove must always back the show. The closing track ‘Your Mum’ is ready to take the mick, but Dubbledge and his stretchy syllables get away with it by including some parental value not to be taken for granted: the man has layers. On what it takes to be a ‘Soopa Gangsta’, Dubbledge put his spin on Big Pun’s most famous lines about Italian culture, and pulls another fast one by being more knowledge of self than guns and furs stereotypes.
‘Taking Libs’ continues his studies into the male-female occupancy of Venus and Mars (“I buy you fish and chips, you should be happy”) – the persona can have the flippancy of a 70s sitcom and pique a PC interest, but that’s entertainment. The album’s centrepiece, the diary of extortion that forms ‘Itchy Itchy’ (previously ‘The Phil Mitchell Crackhead Song’), looks like being the album’s weightiest material; except it’s delivered so that heavy addiction comes off as cheeky chappy tomfoolery, including giving crackheads a shout out on the outro. While you’re not exactly rooting for him as he ducks and dives to fund his habit, it’s more comic strip than public service confessional – and we’re alright with that.
Dubbledge doing damage (“I ain’t trying to be something that I’m not” is verification, if needed, straight out the gate), bears many technicalities: it’s all in the timing of pauses, the theatrical fade aways mid-conversation, the accentuation of pay-off lines on every fourth/eighth/sixteenth bar (including the ‘aw yeaaaaah’s that pepper ‘Chess’, an Amen-break wrecking ball re-sourced from 2011’s Chase & Status/Tinie Tempah collaboration ‘Hitz’), and the pointing of the mic crowd-wards for feedback, before he runs down to your funny bone. Obviously, bravado by the bucketload helps as well: the posse cut with Kyza, Micall Parknsun and TBear, the Englishmen of the belly dancing ‘Mad Dogs’ bumrushing crews out through the fire exit, is a classic case of in-for-a-penny impudence. For all the posturing putting a finger to lips, who wouldn’t be moved by it’s to-the-window, to-the-wall hook of ‘we’re the bollocks!”
All this weight has the right backer: Forest DLG, the newest alias of producer’s producer Chemo/Telemachus, loads up ten moments of loudness spanning rip-n-run club bangers, neck grabs heading into the red, heavy synth power (‘Tear Dem Apart’ – again the title tells nothing like the whole story), and the title track re-enacting a Lock Stock car chase. On ‘Lend a N A Pencil’, Dubbledge peacocks “while I’m standing on a tightrope, one toe balancing/in between the forces of good and evil like Anakin”, while FDLG adjusts a bass frequency back and forth like a bored studio nerd. It’s only on ‘Awkward’, cartwheeling between folk, psychedelia and Big Brovaz’ ‘Nu Flow’, when the producer has a bash at putting on a night on the tiles for his muse to caper across. As much as it’s the album’s sore thumb, it perfectly frames D’s soul-bearing performance.
Never reduced to anything cartoonish despite circling some slapstick bum notes and hormones ruling head, Dubbledge puts on a proper show. Ten years or so on hold hasn’t deadened the impact of Ten Toes Down, and though there are perhaps few surprises given his work in the intervening years, those experiencing his spectacle for the first time have a cult hero to give a big hand to.
Our Daily Bread 477: Jamael Dean ‘Primordial Waters’
November 1, 2021
ALBUM REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Jamael Dean ‘Primordial Waters’
(Stones Throw) 29th October 2021
Anything but indulgent, the much acclaimed American jazz and hip-hop prodigy, Jamael Dean, dreams big with a most ambitious new twenty-track album of tribune and social-political clout. Nothing less than raising the spirits of Black-America, Dean weaves together both a respectful acknowledgement of his Yoruba roots and a street view celestial hip-hop/jazz symphony tribute to L.A.’s Leimart Park – a predominantly Black neighbourhood that’s said to be on the ‘frontline of gentrification’, known for its Black business owned community hubs like Eso Won Books, the Sika Art Gallery, Ride On bike shop and World Stage.
Not so clear cut, nor divided, the Primordial Waters flow between jazz, soul, hip-hop and the classical; the vocals, a mix of diaphanous contoured, lush, lulled and more worked female voices and Dean’s own Freestyle Fellowship mixed with Tanya Morgan and Odd Future poetic, aggrieved observational and conscious raps.
Referencing various deities, spirits from the Yoruba peoples ‘primordial’ creation myth, much of the material splashes around in tumultuous waters as Dean’s collaborative foils, Sharada Shashidas and Mekala Session, use their voices like melodious instruments. At their most intense those vocals, which flow between ancestral dialects, lyrics and sounds, evoke a wailing Linda Sharrock, and just beautifully transcendent when untethered and free. All the while that electric piano spot, dashes and lays down baubles of brightened notes, whilst the drums splash around and offer shimmers and waves of choppy, galloping swells. Beyond-this-realm atmospherics build up a dreamy yet earthy soundtrack of Yoruba mythology.
The Yoruba’s roots began in what are now Nigeria, Benin and Togo, spreading out to all corners of the continent and overseas as a result of both conquest and enslavement. Their deities, traditions are both paid homage to throughout this mini opus. As a musical legacy this civilisation, which spawned the Oyo Kingdom and Benin Empire, is immensely rich and influential. And so across this story of creation there’s hint’s of that influence as well as touches of Sun-Ra, Bobby Hutcherson, Alice Coltrane (Dean’s own ‘Galaxy In Leimert’ is inspired, influenced by Alice Coltrane’s harp-piano spiritualist ‘Galaxy Around Olodumore’), Clive Zanda, Nate Morgan (especially ‘Mrafu’), Nduduzo Makhathini, Mango Santamaria and Pharaoh Sanders.
This grand sweeping cosmology (well, the last third of it anyway) takes a turn towards hip-hop, with Dean rapping over, in some cases, his own jazzier tracks. Like in the style of the late J. Dilla, even Madlib, these groundings are often chopped up, looped, slowed down and reconfigured: The shadowy but celestial mirage ‘Abyss’ reminded me a little of cLOUDEAD. It’s a congruous but expansive turn that takes on a whole different mood, rhythm and cadence; becoming more like a rap album then a wholly jazz orientated one: And for that it works well.
The Primordial Waters have been stirred up to create a grand scheme of spiritual, ancestral inspiration. Multi-layered with titles that in themselves encourage further study – naming a pantheon of African gods -, this is a wonderfully executed work of free-flowing picturesque and more turbulent beauty. If I believed in those fatuous scoring systems used by so many rival sites, this would be a nine of out ten: awarded not just for effect but effort too.
Our Daily Bread 461: Uncommon Nasa ‘Only Child’
August 3, 2021
ALBUM REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA
Uncommon Nasa ‘Only Child’
(Uncommon Records) 6th August 2021
Encompassing the local and surrounding areas of the city he’s never left, the leftfield candid hip-hop artist Uncommon Nasa takes a poignant look back at his roots on his sixth studio album, Only Child. For a rap artist known for their open delivery, this latest soliloquy and sagacious lyrical roll is possibly the most personal yet.
Now into his early forties (the release date is actually the day after Nasa’s 43rd birthday) and as the slurred and slowed down sample on the album track ‘Your Hands will Turn To Rust’ remarks, “I’m the kind of a guy who is now in that ageing late thirty, early forty bracket in which suddenly there is a tremendous bittersweet poignant feeling about wanting to go back to another time…” And so it is the same for Nasa: dispensing wisdom, the short tales of those who made an impact on his life, and the growing pains, memories of those formative years on both Long Island and Staten Island (where he still lives).
The album title describes Nasa’s unique perspective, growing up without siblings; spending a lot of time alone but developing a rich, cerebral imagination, lyrical skills and an eclectic taste in music. Now decades on, and with his long time partner the open-minded reflective rapper runs, meanders and drops lines about all the connections and ‘what ifs?’ About the tropes that so many of us in a similar age bracket (that’s me: the only child) either agonize over or ponder. With no children of his own (again, that’s also me), the lineage stops when Nasa leaves this mortal coil (God forbid!). Although the musical legacy and his view of the world will live on: “If I die, just see it as I did”.
Nasa flies solo on this album: and all the better for it. So many hip-hop artists fill their work with umpteen cameos – the bread and butter of so many emcees, hoping to appeal to a multiple of fans. Only Child is however produced by the Baltimore ‘beat-placer’ Messiah Musik , who’s lent his trade to Mach-Hommy’s ‘Pray For Haiti’ and cuts by Billy Woods and Quelle Chris. Messiah has worked with Nasa before of course, on the 2014 release, New York Telephone. He now provides a highly atmospheric, often psychedelic, moody and mysterious cosmic soundscape on this brilliant epiphany. Against Nasa’s intelligent trains of consciousness that production proves a congruous fit; subtle, minimal at times, with the most evocative of leftfield jazzy-prog touches. The elemental particle opener, ‘Quark Strangeness In The Hour Of Chaos’, for instance has that echo-y atmosphere of harmonic pining jazzy-prog looseness (bordering on Pink Floyd), as Nasa’s strung-out and just as loose inner thoughts drip and starkly limber up. It actually reminded me a little of Sex And Violence era BDP, with its almost foreboding unveiling of thoughts from a dark tech dystopia.
Already picked up by Monolith Cocktail collaborator Matt Oliver (who also included Nasa’s Kount Fif produced 2019 album, City As School, in our choice albums list) for our monthly revue playlist, precursor single ‘U86’ features some reworked Southeast Asian or Japanese soundtrack; the Oriental bed for a track about tuning into the localized TV station of the title, which offered a window into a whole world of music for a young Nasa, including Tears For Fears. Not shy in conveying his feelings, Nasa raps, “Tears For Fears, I cried when I heard that song, I don’t know why I listened to it for so long.” By the time we reach the Run The Jewels mirage title-track the production has changed to embrace a lunar Peruvian panpipe! Later on, the theme music from some 70s detective or thriller series, accompanied by crunched turning over drum breaks, wraps itself around another album single, ‘Brooklyn Soup’: a psychogeography like walk in the boroughs.
That eclectic ear for a sample, break continues with ‘Vincent Crane’; a discovery that Nasa implores as, “just one example of things you should, might know.” The fateful travails of the bi-polar Crane, who spent most of his life in and out of clinics after suffering a mental breakdown during his first tour of the USA with the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown in 1968, permeated an evocative songbook, which decades later left an indelible mark upon Nasa. Before a tragic overdose in 1989, Crane would collaborate with Brown on a “deep cut” album and set up Atomic Rooster with a pre supergroup ELP Carl Palmer. I think Nasa uses a short piano break from Atomic’s Made In England LP (the introduction before ‘Breathless’) as he waxes lyrical about not only Crane but the common trajectory of all music genres in general over time: “Turns out that if you give a genre a few decades, the same roads are sought.”
Only Child is a mature, often bittersweet, review of a life lived and the characters that made it what it was and is; from Nasa’s parents to the uncompromising figure of ‘Metal Mike’). Nasa goes deep; entangled in a multitude of slipstreamed thoughts and mixed feelings; observations and reflections on the realties of middle age in a society that doesn’t ever want to comprehend their own deaths, let alone grow old. Certain memories pop up and prove relevant in this process, from his mother’s repeated echoing warnings (“If you touch that fence, your hand’s will turn to rust”) to the more innocuous details of his Brooklyn diorama.
It’s not just age that prays on the mind, but the unprecedented times in which we all find ourselves; sixteen months on after the initial Covid lockdowns and fear prevailed miasma of a virus determining how we live. This proves a good as any time to take stock and reflect; something Nasa does with dexterous skill and a cerebral half spoken winding brilliance (close in tone and brilliance to Aesop Rock). Nasa’s just claimed a top spot on the hip-hop pyramid with one of the best albums in 2021.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Our Daily Bread 426: Illman ‘Ugly Days’
February 23, 2021
EP REVIEW/MATT OLIVER
Illman ‘Ugly Days’
(Potent Funk) 18th February 2021
Should any global implosion occur – and right now that’s not a very big should – the mic will remain the sole property of Illaman. Of noted livewires Problem Child and Pengshui, Illaman, troubled and tightly wound before falling back, reaches a crossroads of riding out the apocalypse and wondering where it all went wrong; but where demons are treated like a pen pal and ignorance is a useful defence mechanism, he never lets on as to whether Ugly Days is catharsis, cry for help or just a shrug to deal with the matter. After all, there remain “so many questions, not many answers”.
Right-hand man Norm Oddity plugs into an electrified vista that those with the world on their mind and shoulders can take solace from, simultaneously triggering itchy souls into taking action, unblinking in the eye of the storm. For headphones and hoods under low light, “these emotions run rife when you’ve spent your whole life trying”, the breakbeats of ‘Everything Bless?’ stalking Illaman to scuttle down dark alleys. Unapologetic in its vulnerability and bruised introspection, the title track is aware that situations could slide even further, the guesting DRS providing an even more numb, dead eyed view as electronic shoots of optimism are shushed down.
On the nobility of ‘OK’, promoting a positive hook as doom takes a breather, Illaman boldly puts his backbone into it: a low-key rousing of the troops speaking up for the outsider (“make some noise for yourself fam, go celebrate your weirdness”), even if the message comes through gritted teeth. “I stay strong like ox, stay on course when you flop/cos all them little battles is what you remember at the top” is a lesson crossing the cipher into the real world, ahead of ‘Universe’ re-upping cause for cautious cheer. A lo-fi headswim with a montage of life lessons flashing before Illaman’s ears, it represents the EP causing and curing insomnia, and the orator’s substance intake both blocking the bigger picture and boosting confidence in a bleak midst.
The psychological profiling of eerie closer ‘Way Home’ is another to split itself: this time between self-help insight and unreachable scratch, Norm Oddity peers through the blinds in a sole instance of the producer perhaps losing faith while Illaman dismisses any fairytale ending. Austere and wide open, allowing for time to breathe and explore, Oddity represents the spaced out in both the extra terrestrial and mind-altering sense, offering unspoken yet meaningful encouragement that’s not without its moments of claustrophobia: take Illaman out of the equation and you have a rich half dozen of brain teasers before bedtime. The emcee’s forcefulness, conviction, anger and erudition, standing as the last man of reason out of hiding, makes him both untouchable (as both man and emcee) and as exposed as everyone else. Never proclaiming to be a saviour, it’s this everyman sharing of hopes and fears that moulds Ugly Days into a tome for all modern existence. Matt Oliver
Matt Oliver joined the Monolith Cocktail team over five years ago, contributing the leading Hip-Hop column in the UK. In recent years Matt has selected tracks for the blog’s Monthly Playlist Revue and written one-off reviews. You can see his professional practice as a dab hand at biographies and newsletters, blurbs long and short, liner notes and promotional texts, and putting words to the promotion of singles/EPs, albums/compilations, and upcoming/established artists/DJs/producers/events on his portfolio-style website.
Apart from the Monolith Cocktail Matt has written features & reviews in print and online for Seven/DMC Update, Hip-Hop Connection, Breakin Point, Rime Magazine (US), Undercover Magazine, One Week to Live, IDJ, Remix (US), FACT, Clash, BigShot (US), Mrblunt.com (US), Worlddj.com, Datatransmission.co.uk.
Our Daily Bread 417: Verses Bang ‘The New Normal?’
January 7, 2021
EP Review/Words: Dominic Valvona
Verses Bang ‘The New Normal?
15th January 2021
The sartorially pop-cultured bespoke Hip-Hop and Trap artist Verses Bang should be basking in the L.A. sun and spectacle of his new life-changing home, yet the stresses and anxieties of the global pandemic have taken away some of that sheen and enthusiasm. Moving from a Southend-On-Sea “town full of hate” to a “land full of the pretentious”, the Essex-twanged rapper has done good: and deservedly so, as he informs us on the bubble-cocooned title-track of his upcoming EP, The New Normal?
Immigrating stateside and recently betrothed Bangs escapes a cycle of indifference and envy for life in a whole different bubble. Working the UK circuit with little success and luck, a shot in the city of angels beckoned: Covid-19 has put a kaboosh on matters though. Bangs inaugural address of 2021 is a pent-up frustration, enquiry and also playful conversation let loose over a crossover of Hip-Hop, Trap, Grime, even soulful R&B beats, samples and itching computerised percussion – very nicely produced I might add.
Though a decade in a career of travails, Bangs sounds fresher, leaner and hungrier than ever on this seven-track showcase. That addictive personality with all its anxieties is still strongly referenced throughout: made even worse by the uncertainty and stress of avoiding the new coronavirus plague. The New Normal? is a statement not only of intent, but both a lyrically lightened and serious attempt to convey the eccentricities and daily grind of life under a pandemic.
Dispensing references at a fair old rate from both home and the L.A. diorama of hierarchal row-competing, courtside Hollywood stars and major wrestling icons (Brian Pillman Jnr. making a cameo on the EP’s cheerleading ‘Still Pillman Skit’), Bangs contrasts the doldrums of a wet-weekend in Essex to rubbing shoulders (at a distance of course) with Jack Nicholson and Ice Cube. Never taking himself too seriously, fame is mere smoke, and social media a vacuous hole: “I don’t really Tweet, I just follow my dreams.” Nicholson’s role in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is used as an outro sample on the questioning ‘Courtside Jack’ prowler: a track that lays out the rapper’s move to California; a gutsy move from stagnation and constant negativity it turns out. A life of uncertainty to: “Am I too old for Hip-Hop?”, “Am I too old for Snapchat? Too old for TikTok?”
At times he also conveys the frightening omnipresence of Covid-19 (on the EP’s most Hip-Hop of Hip-Hop tracks, ‘Covid 44’ – “Call me Tina Quarantina”), and at other times aims a salvo at the hypocrites whilst counting his own luck (‘Jackpot’). However, it’s almost a case of marauder sleaze on the dirty team-up ‘Injured Pirates’, which features Kettering rapscallion foil Tommy Dockerz (of Dirty Dockerz infamy). The pair originally had a dust-up on the ‘Slick Flair’ track, which gets a mention on this Goonies-heavy referenced flick. Tommy lets rip with chicken licking, titty-bar infection-ridden glee and indignation.
Great lines and bars permeate this fresh and pepped take on the perils of making it in a pandemic-striven society; with Bangs expanding his playfulness, yet ready to drop in some heavy serious stresses. As Bangs advises, “stay hydrated”, and keep that sanitizer near as it doesn’t look like things will be returning back to normal (if they ever truly will) anytime soon. Our Essex lad turn L.A. hopeful has just laid down one of his finest statements of intent, and despite everything, things look pretty positive for this long-overdue breakthrough. (Dominic Valvona)
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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