MATT OLIVER’S ESSENTIAL HIP-HOP ROUNDUP
Singles/EPs
No time to celebrate 50 Cent becoming a bitcoin millionaire or Snoop releasing a gospel album, or Mos Def and Talib Kweli touting a Black Star reunion produced by Madlib. Right about now, groggy jazz from Jazz T and bleary digs from Lee Scott make potent points on ‘Ceiling’/’Urn Money’, matched by sweet and sour remixes from Pitch92 and Sleepwalker. The superior, subliminal sales technique of Genesis Elijah primes ‘How to Lose Fans and Alienate Listeners’ as a bestseller and puts a police cordon around the club. Weighing in at a headbanging ‘310 Pounds’, Juga-Naut and Mr Brown use the devil’s horns as their finishing move. A good heart these days is hard to find, so Ty giving you the benefit of his 20/20 vision is like a shot from Cupid on the breezy seesaw ‘Eyes Open’ featuring Durrty Goodz.
Wise-past-midnight pair Summers Sons are ones to cling to when the next weather warning comes calling, ‘Undertones’ an EP of sticky jazz drifts keeping it moving while remaining perfectly still. In the same postcode, Fanshore & Tropic’s touch of the ‘Reaper’ finds Hawaiian flutter in the Big Smoke, and the softly spoken stream of Coops’ ‘That Jazz’ means now he’s gonna rip you apart. Thug paradise, J Rocc-style, is to blend Mobb Deep and Sade into a whole new bunch of quiet storms. Tasked with the smooth operation of hijacking every 80s wine bar ever, six ‘Thug Ballads’ copy-and-paste their way up for coffee.
Underground bout of the year is found on the comic book crash course ‘Nautical Depth’, where Czarface and DOOM cause forum frenzy with pay-off lines galore and a bassline drilling into your ears. Apathy has also been busy doing dream team deals, appearing with Pharoahe Monch on the Pete Rock-made ‘I Keep On’, then swinging hard over ‘The Order’ of DJ Premier. On the move and on the loose, Sav Killz’ ‘Thundercats’ calls to the wild for some rough and tumble sent cartwheeling by Dirty Diggs. Credit to PHZ-Sicks for turning Sisqo’s most infamous panty raid into a hard hitting address causing ‘Riot in My Memory’. Moodie Black’s punishing industrialism lead by guesting gatekeeper Ceschi sews ‘Lips’ shut; dangerously atmospheric, as hell’s gates remove their padlock. Fake news gets a brick of actual fact to the face, unexpectedly from People Under the Stairs, playing the role of upset press blowing ‘Dog Whistles’.
Albums
Dr Syntax and Pete Cannon are back in full effect, opening up essential dialogue on ‘Let’s Talk’. Ever the polite pop culture vulture, Syntax thumbs through school photos and double-barrels the handbook of how to be an upstanding citizen and a hip-hop A-Z, with Cannon’s bruising beats keeping it cheeky, including one of his infamous Commodore-sponsored jungle jump-ups. Entertaining each and every time, the double act should be kept on speed dial in case of emergencies.
The main pastimes in the 20-strong Brighton borough of ‘Wizville’ are savagery and thrill rides. Ocean Wisdom stretches his rep with that 0-to-60 flow causing heart tremors, playing with the pitch control on the beats to alter the shades of black and blue he leaves the scene with, and placing guests Method Man, Rodney P, Roots Manuva, Jehst and Dizzee Rascal as almost incidental. Just when you think he’s showing signs of flagging, the assault rages on, maintaining Wisdom’s impressive ascent and already giving 2018 plenty to ponder.
Farma G’s wistful beats introduce ‘The Sentimental Alien’ to the modern world. Wishful thinkers and regal peace seekers from the Task Force intel, make it easy for handpicked emcees like Recognize Ali, Ric Branson, Smellington Piff, Anyway Tha God and Dirty Dike to dirty up a sound tinted a fine shade of rose. The custom brand, don’t-care daggers flung by Lee Scott and Black Josh create the monster that is the B-Movie Millionaires. With Sam Zircon behind the camera and keeping things eerily sluggish/sluggishly eerie, ‘Attack of The 50,000 Ft Sweg Lawds from Outer Space’ is a slumping battle royal of a snuff flick, a beast showing how it “put two and two together and got triple six”. The cure for a sub-zero February is having Pupils of the Clock waiting on you, enterprising Cornwall pair Tok and Lazy Eyez forging a clear path through crisp beats nudging the drowse button and sixth sense connections on ‘Timeless’. No danger of them following through on the declaration that “when we’ve got nothing left to say, that’s the point that we’ll call it a day”.
From the moment he draws first breath on ‘Weather or Not’, Evidence embarks on a masterclass. The man himself states “there are no wasted words”, inspiring under grey skies (the Dilated Peoples man is always better when there’s a storm afoot), holding your attention, and making you feel he’s dismissing (though not dissing) you as he lays everything bare with no discernible change in temperament. The forecast? One of 2018’s best.
Putting “the sublime in the subliminal”, Skyzoo’s ‘In Celebration of Us’ is some of the smoothest psychology and concrete consciousness you’ll hear this year. Written in the streets, penned to stir and examine the soul with his conversion of gunfingers to quotation marks, and cornering both the lounge and the late night creep, Skyzoo raises a glass with vitamin-rich articulation undercut with provocation, and making it look easy while his does it. One to be toasted over and over.
After Adrian Younge offered you ‘Twelve Reasons to Die’, Apollo Brown gives you another dozen dirty deeds to hold your head high by/duck down to. Repackaged as ‘The Brown Tape’ with Ghostface Killah exacting sepia-toned revenge, Wu-Tang Clan members to the right (wild for the night), and Brown providing his own gentlemen’s agreements regarding dead body disposal, it’s a classy sister dynasty mixing noble finesse and brute strength. With Sonnyjim selling you glamorous 70s crime and circling the block like a vulture, Chicago’s Vic Spencer puts his business card in the shop window for the rest of the year on ‘Spencer for Higher’. Top of his CV: the perfect voice for completing a schemes and hustles to-do list, and spitting with a charm happy to chew you up and spit you out.
You can’t keep a good man down, and Planet Asia, riding beats like a son of a gun about to clean up town, gets you wise to the ways of ‘The Golden Buddha’. That West Coast flow is still in fine fettle, sounding typically parched but never found dousing his disdain for non-believers and those slow on the draw. Still a deadlock breaker you can trust.
Room temperature boom bap sending you to the land of head nod, Klim Beats adds to the instrumental handbook focusing on jazz and funk. Hip-hop to do your spring cleaning by, though you’ll do well to come up as spotless as the Ukrainian’s ‘Natural’ sound. Looking to goad emcees into action, Badhabitz unveils a bulk of soul flips and darker omens. Staunch kicks and snares earning top dollar throughout, ‘Beat Library Volume 1’ makes itself easily available for your ears.
Under the name of an end of level boss with an Esoteric twang, Rock Mecca fights for the right to earn the freedom of ‘Ironworld’. To a flood of swirling symphonies within touching distance of Armageddon and pyrotechnics bankrolled by Hollywood, Vast Aire, Roc Marciano, Kool Keith and Canibus all try on knuckle dusters for size. Those unable to stand the heat will quickly be directed to the kitchen door. Now for the new album from Ugly Duckling’s Andy Cooper, in three easy, foolproof steps: grab a microphone, despatch a bunch of funk breaks hula-hooping or celebrating Mardi Gras, and invite Blabbermouf and Abdominal to challenge the rules on tongue-twisters. Doing what he does best, that’s ‘The Layered Effect’ for you.
For your eyes only: Cut Chemist versus the photofit, and hooray for Hozay.
HIP-HOP REVIEW
WORDS/SELECTIONS: MATT OLIVER
So, where’d you place your X this month? Rapture & Verse voted for that bloke dressed as a fish finger, mainly because we’ve always been down with Captain Birdseye, but was interested in how emcees were able to draw out the youthful/apathetic when it came to getting involved in the polling process. Here’s an example of hip-hop that rocked the vote: Si Phili leads the canvas, with Si Spex flipping Mott the Hoople.
Singles
East London’s C.A.M. sticks his size nine into DJ Daredevil’s jazz silk-n-snares, front foot form that orders the rest to ‘Act Like You Know’: slickness capable of slipping in a scissor kick. To a knotted, backwards sliding guitar doing the hula all wrong, Earth2Tom gives Frshrz free rein to examine the ‘N_WRD’, a deft dictionary drill that you need to know about. Someone has really got Micall Parknsun’s goat, and we should all be grateful, smashing into Mr Thing tinkling a piano into an ominous tremor and guaranteeing ‘The Raw’. Remixes come from Jazz T slinking in hobnailed boots, and Park-E arming himself with an organ crowing that the enemy is near.
From the ‘Baby Driver’ OST, Danger Mouse builds a custom block rocker for Run the Jewels to floor it to, the hot-wired funk of ‘Chase Me’ picking up Big Boi en route and laughing all the way from the bank. Young RJ quietly urges you to ‘Wait’, a smooth soul swirl taking the edge off with Boldy James and Pete Rock biding their time to invest in a track that’s four minutes worth of sweet spots from the Slum Village affiliate. Also frosted with street cream, Chris Rivers’ ‘Lord Knows’ is one to keep heads up and life in perspective, all while shouting out Joey Tribbiani. The hipster experience from WLK & BSS, both advocates of sunglasses at night, turns skeletal electro into pulsing neon on ‘Nightlife’; from the falsetto hook to the soft trap furnishings, it’s a cruise down the strip acting as high society on social media.
Too tangy for your tastebuds? There’s always Prophets of Rage’s ‘Unfuck the World’: more rock-rap rallying and polling booth ransacking from Chuck D, B Real and RATM which speaks for itself, right down to the video directed by Michael Moore. Alternatively, try Prozack Turner’s ‘Obsession’, a rumpus of guitar-bucking hip-hop matching a B-boy stance with a tip of the Stetson.
Albums
‘Billy Green is Dead’ writes Jehst, a life and times chronicle showing the sort of word association and plain English penmanship that has long made him the UK’s premier emcee. Psychedelic residue, where the Drifter carries on mixing toxins ‘til he’s lost in the synergy, drips into his bests of being uppity and indignant, shaping a storyboard of the eponymous paranoid android dealing with the five degrees of grief. Open-ended enough to keep you wondering whether this is all one carefully calculated dream/lavishly constructed fake news, it’s a demise to be joyous about.
With Ramson Badbonez coming on strong on ‘Hypnodic’ (full review here), an ace marksman hitting every shot at the shy before quickly ducking out, Joe Blow is ‘The Smoking Ace’, the Squid Ninja mixing up surprisingly soulfully tuned rhyme sprees with raw balaclava ripostes – “my life’s a snuff film they won’t show at the cinema” – with consistency absolutely paramount. Ral Duke, Pacewon, Roc Marciano and Skamma help Blow give it both barrels.
With his usual UK to US blend of quiet storms turning into full blown street typhoons, Endemic Emerald, directed by the begrizzled Skanks the Rap Martyr, present ‘Rapsploitation’. Featuring a clutch of underground generals, only press play if you’re a school of hard knocks alumnus and list your hobbies as looking directly into the eye of the storm. Guided by the uppermost UK pedigree on the mic, the recruitment skills of Australian producer Must Volkoff are a bargain for ‘Aquanaut’ to watchfully guard the gateway to the deep. Add some local emcees to the vibe warning against one false move (please, no quips about going Down Under), and it becomes an album to sneak past security where the reward is worth the risk.
Combative in the ‘Game of Death’, Gensu Dean and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers are a well matched pair of pugilists. Dean’s production, woven with a wispy touch of consternation while pulling no punches, and WI’s spry, Kendrick-ish flow always aware of the threat in hand, make it an event fit for a king. Scathing political observations are the key to the lock of David Banner’s ‘The God Box’, throwing open an interesting Southern variety of funk, soul, trap, spoken word and rock to rummage through. The complex sharpens your elbows (including one wedding first dance) with messages doing the same to your brain. FYI’s ‘ameriBLAKKK’ might not make as many genre hops but is just as focused on modern day and historical injustice, a quickness of lip and concept from the LA provocateur showing the possibilities of standing up and smoothing it out (including one late night booty call).
Set in a doorstep reality of drum machines, rap bots, isolation stations and soul flashbacks shambling and shimmering to a mostly unexplained specification, two albums of enigmatic boundary twisting from Shabazz Palaces aim to drown you in lyrical/production depth, or make you feel you’re the last being on earth. Both ‘Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Star’ (featuring an unofficial bend of Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’) and ‘Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines’ reek of jet pack fuel, docking late night to mark the X in unorthodox.
Blacastan & Stu Bangas’ ‘The Uncanny Adventures of Watson & Holmes’ contains a disappointingly low number of references to deerstalkers and matters being ‘elementary’. A single case-cracking track later (‘Murder Mystery II’), Blacastan’s grimy, jawbreaker rhymes are permanently on code red until he’s almost chasing his own tail, and Stu Bangas’ beats – weapon of choice proudly displayed on the sleeve – riddles boom bap with a quiver of hollow 80s synths and American wrestler rawk. English detective pleasantries < “Gravediggaz, with a lil’ bit of Main Source.” Kool G Rap’s ‘Return of the Don’ is swamped in guests to the point where’s he almost the first leg to his own album relay. The calibre of those joining the salivary stick ups is undeniable – Raekwon, Termanology, Sean Price, Cormega and more – and wall to wall production from MoSS allows ample street profiling, but overall it’s another veteran’s day hustle dampening expectations.
Straightforwardly jazzy and making the MPC sound like a million bucks, BennyBen’s ’16 Levels’ is a Finnish breeze of instrumentalism, with the odd dark strand and a couple of mic spots from OnePlusOne bringing the cappuccino beats to the boil. Mightily living up to its title, Fredfades’ ‘Warmth’ flows like sun rays through blinds, with fawning hip-hop rhymes on hire and a soul bronzing that’ll chase away meteorological grey. Of boom-bap crafted as bittersweet symphonies and burdened jazz wanting alone time in the rain, Remulak’s ‘Earth’ is still a comforting presence getting the best from your headphones.
Mixtapes
Always landing sunny side up, Jay Prince’s ‘Late Summers’ has got R&B moves and the lure of the trap as its main prongs of attack. The influences soon become obvious, as is Prince’s smarter-than-most planning to anchor many a good weathered party, whether your yacht’s at full speed, or someone’s shouted there’s more alcohol back at theirs.
Vital visuals this month: Juga-Naut’s self-assessment, Dutch Mob’s photo album, Datkid getting a foot in the door and the thrift of Career Crooks.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 