James Blake is a ghost. The ghost of a broken hearted romantic from the 1800s that wound up trapped in an iPad. His music occupies this strange space that feels pre-industrial and simultaneously unable to exist without the technology of the contemporary moment. Yes, he’s a critical darling, and one of the “figure heads” of a vast and multi-dimensional global electronic music scene, but he’s also an artistic anachronism. Blake sprinkles EPs and remixes here and there, and now with his second album Overgrown, would be hard pressed to produce a discography that touches 50 total songs. In an age were some artists release 50 songs in 18 months, this “restraint” creates an anticipation and demand for his sound, further buoyed by how idiosyncratic it is. Sure, Blake does not exist in a vacuum as it relates to genre or aesthetic proclivities, but they way in which he compiles and re-shapes his influences erases the need to lump him in with EDM, IDM or dubstep. Even as those sounds have made their way into the mainstream, at his core (just as with his debut), Overgrown exists as a disfigured but enchanting testament to the power of soul music.

The lead leak/single “Retrograde” is prime example of James’ soulful core. It’s basically a church boy on his piano humming his heart’s desire. Subtle piano notes melt into a mechanical soul clap and James’ tedious croon. Soon an assortment of synths and processed vocal harmonies consume that skeletal framework and make one feel as though they’ve boarded a ship into interstellar space. James is literally “wooing” like Marvin behind all the sonic pyrotechnics and singing the panties off his muse. Earlier in the album “I Am Sold” does a great job of showing how Blake not only plays with tempos, but opposing textures. What seems to start off as a ballad, quickly transforms into this reserved dance number only to reveal itself as an eerie down tempo number full of plopping Linn drum sounds and rickety hi-hats. Blake is never in a rush to reveal the shades of his circumspect mind.

Overgrown’s most narcotic moment though, has to be “Life Round Here”. As a piece of music that sounds like a calm walk through the park, only to be propelled into sports car speed just by how Blake stacks (and cuts/edits) his infectious harmonies over the crunchy warped organs. “Life Round Here”’s low end is brilliantly understated, yet nimble in a boom-bap form that easily segue into the song’s brief huge apex. It’s a fantastic piece of sound assemblage that is equal parts somber and hope-filled. This type of sound assembling only becomes more combustible and sanctimonious on the Brian Eno produced “Digital Lion”. It’s a song that begins kind of clunky and awkward, but moves into this gospel-esque, lover’s chain-gang tune of polyrhythm. Both songs show not only how Blake has expanded on the minimalism of James Blake, but also found new ways to build the style he began back with CMYK in 2010.

There is no need to throw in the obvious qualifiers and adjectives as it relates to this album as a whole. It simply does not disappoint. “Voyeur” is a nice up tempo house track, while the RZA feature “Take A Fall For Me” works surprisingly well after beginning borderline cheesy. This is what music “should” sound like in a world where social life is mediated through computers, wallets have less money in them, and a general sense of malaise and fragmentation is felt through people’s identities. These are the reason I described Overgrown as disfigured and enchanting soul music above. Soul music (not the genre ascribed to Black artists of the ’70s) is a sound that is true to the times as interpreted by its author. Overgrown isn’t always pretty, but it damn sure resonates a profound beauty.

4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5 out of 5

Yeah, yeah, we know. We hella late. Czarface has already been out six weeks and received a fair share of critical love. There is no excusing this oversight being that it’s been a relatively light year in music thus far, but these things happen. Sorry Internet. Also there is no need to drown this review with references to Rebel INS’s often over-shadowed but prominent role in the Wu, and how 7L & Esoteric were one of many aesthetic offspring to Wu’s influential tree. The three, along with producer Spada4 (and a healthy dose of the new lyrical-miracle crop), connect for 45 minutes of samples, booms, baps, similes, metaphors and turntable-made hooks. Wrapped within a dizzying array of old school WCW/WWF, and comic book references, this is the milky tit to the malnourished “true skool-ers” mouth.

“Air ‘Em Out” opens fantastically with sampled but finely mixed drums that slap under a crunchy bass and piano that Deck and Eso fire off nice 16s to. Roc Marciano slips his snipers flow right into the mix on “Cement 3’s” which sounds exactly like the title with a repetitive sample that noisily plays and juxtaposes a bubbling video game harmony. It’s a strong start to a record that does not deviate from its intent: raw beats and rhymes for one moment. “Czar Refaeli” featuring Oh No sounds like the theme music to a B-movie sci-fi thriller about killer robot cops and a rebel force on their last rations; it’s dope. The album also ends with the narco-cinematics of “Hazmat Rap” that sounds like the future of boom-bap rap. The head-nod factor is on ten, but is also semi-upbeat and melodic without relying on samples for its mood.

Plainly put, the star of this show is the 7L and Spada4 production. They collected sounds and drums that glide, pop, and move through speakers while giving it that gutter veneer. With the small interludes and songs that hover around three-to-four minutes, the album moves start to finish very smoothly. Sadly the weak link on Czarface is the rapping. Sometimes I’ll admit that my listening and appreciation is drowned in a cloud of nostalgia that has Deck verses like “C.R.E.A.M.“, “Triumph“, “Guillotine“, “For Heaven’s Sake“, and “Above The Clouds” as barometers of what great rappers are capable of. Also the very sound of Esoteric’s voice makes my soul wince. It’s nasally, yet high-pitched, and is very unnatural in its delivery. By the album’s end, I wish this was just a Deck solo and that Deck himself didn’t at times seem to be just going through the motions and sounded hungrier. Yet there is quality music here and many traditionalist rap fans will get a healthy amount of plays from these records.

3 out of 5 stars

3 out of 5

Let’s be clear, even in just reviewing an album, Jimi is one of the most difficult artists to write about for a multitude of reasons. He is one of the most heavily researched, documented, and celebrated musicians of the past century for good reason. His innovations, influence, and legacy do not need to be rearticulated here being that there is a vast amount of literature at your local book store and on the web that you can sink your mind into.

Where I will place this review is within the complicated realm of posthumously released material. Songs and albums that find there way into the formal and informal music market economy by way of fans, friends, family, fellow musicians, or an estate. Recording quality can be an issue, as can be repackaged material that has seen the light of day three of four times previously. Then there are always the ethics of releasing something after an artist has passed being that they are not here to oversee a mix or OK an edit.  Yet, countless artists have spoken of labels fucking there mixes without there consent, or the inability of an artist to release material they want to due to label obligations. Shit, did they even want the material to fill our sound systems? Fans of artists as diverse as Jimi, Morrison, Cobain, Pac and Dilla, have all wrestled with these questions in their brains when experiencing new music post-death.

Now we find ourselves with another collection of “never-before-heard” Hendrix music People, Hell & Angels, which was overseen by his sister Janie’s estate. Some quick lurking of various message boards quickly showed that the majority of this music is not new, some existing in bootleg form since the late ’80s and early ’90s. While other songs have appeared in various cuts/edits/mixes on other posthumous releases. While some celebrate the better sound quality of the records, and songs without over dubs, we Hendrix stans can be a cantankerous bunch. So allow me to try and speak on the music without all the ethical and critical baggage.

First some background on where these recording emerged from. Eleven of these twelve songs were recorded by Jimi and his various band mates (mostly Band of Gypsies co-stars Cox and Miles) in 1969 after Jimi’s anamorphic and sensual classic Electric Ladyland, and within the expanded band (than scaled-back) excursions of the First Rays of the New Rising Sun period. Two songs, “Let Me Move You” and “Mojo Man” contain non-Hendrix vocals, and another three are straight instrumental movements. All songs were “prepped” for release by Eddie Kramer (who was Jimi’s engineer throughout his career) and John McDermott; and to be honest the mix sounds kind of flat and lifeless throughout.

One of this album’s stand outs is “Hear My Train A Comin’”, it has all the sonic vitriol and emotional power found in Hendrix classics like “Voodoo Chile” or “Machine Gun”. Steeped in the sweat of the blues tradition and textures of the rock of its time “Hear My Train…” has Hendrix singing the classic blues tale of leaving a town that has broken his soul, as Cox and Miles’ rhythm section keeps the pulse heavy. The calisthenic funk of “Izabella” is another great moment, with Hendrix coloring all over Mitch Mitchell’s manic break beat drumming, while Cox’s bass line gives the record that face crunchin’ pimp lean. One of People, Hell and Angel’s more reserved but powerful moments is the final instrumental “Villanova Junction Blues”; a moody piece of broken drum rolls, steely reverb bass, and Hendrix getting all reflective on his axe as through his driving on the American open road alone at night.

What’s interesting about this collection of songs is that the kinetic, at times furious coloring outside the line of Hendrix we found on the first three proper albums is more calculating and toned down. The abstracted flourishes are still there but contained within more basic melodies and song structures. Also songs like “Let Me Move You” and “Mojo Man” are down right jam sessions in the vein of Sly and The Family Stone, where horns, pianos, guitars, congas and drums are all in a friendly fight to cook up some raucous yet soulful stew. Even his lyrical poetics are more straight forward and further minimized to maximize the focus on the instrumentation.

This collection (as others in the past) shows us Jimi’s blues man at heart, in a way returning to his roots, but attempting to make sure his music sits comfortably at the table of his contemporaries. It shows a tireless musician who recorded hundreds of songs (originals and covers) within a four year time frame, constantly challenging himself to reach uncharted sonic territories by reinventing his sound. For the tireless Hendrix aficionado People, Hell and Angels is nothing other than more pimping of his indelible legacy, for others (the younger) it’s a very strong batch of songs that marks another dimension to the ways Hendrix and company collapsed genres and socio-musical barriers.

No Rating

Thirteen years ago Bilal crept into the musical landscape with his visceral work on Common’s organic opus Like Water For Chocolate. He provided the hook to lead single the “6^th Sense”, and backing vocals on personal favorite “Funky For You”. A year later he would release his critically acclaimed (and moderately selling) debut 1^st Born Second at the crux of the “neo-soul” marketing moment. Bilal was a New School trained jazz vocalist with a flair for the dramatic during live performances, and the persona of a confident quixotic lover from Philly. But over a decade later, on his fourth album, Bilal is more of weary reserved sage with tales of how brutal and inspiring love can actualize within one’s life journey. His voice, once a soaring galvanizing force of skill and emotion, has become a quieter tool: raspy, subtle, and narrative driven. Thus his music has transformed into a sort of bluesy circumspection with properly composed flourishes of sound and genre-blending style.

On A Love Surreal, Bilal finds a nice balance between Love For Sale’s lush funky evocative vibe, and Airtight’s Revenge’s abstracted proggy-soul. Lead single “Back To Love”’s playful groove allows Bilal to ask a simple question: “After the fussin-n-fightin’, how does a couple get back to smiling at each other?” The bass, guitar and Rhodes all nimbly glide in and around each other as Bilal paints scenes of a relationship getting back on track. Bilal’s voice is seductive, calm, and earnest throughout. This is followed by “Winning Hand”, a strutting blend of jazz, R&B, and rock lead by a bubbling bassline that finds Bilal musing about his gambling habits that acts as a metaphor for falling for a woman who seems to be nothing but trouble. Another of A Love Surreal’s stronger moments is the erotic noir of “Climbing”: a cinematic tale of sex aided by a propulsive rhythm section and electronic accents that make one feel like they’re driving at high speed in a car. These songs capture the more “muscular” and accessible half of the album.

Yet Bilal’s bread and butter have always been his dramatic ballads of loving, love lost, and being lovelorn. His acute ability to capture the lingering force of a broken heart, unrelenting desire, or the vitality and vigor of a new love/muse is uncanny. “Slipping Away” and “Lost For Now” are the brightest constellations on this album. The former is a slow burn, building around soft stuttering snares, wavering guitar chords, and harp strings. Bilal slips between the sedated morose composition and begins to show off those herculean vocals; singing about losing his lover. The song sounds like an extraterrestrial version of Motown floating away on a boat. “Lost For Now” is a three-verse story of how Bilal transitions from the abyss of loneliness following what we just heard on “Slipping Away” accompanied by a deceptive acoustic guitar. The acoustics’ despair turns into a soothing hope as our singer finds a new woman with a powerful transformative smile. It’s the album’s clearest, most emotional, and well-written piece. The songs are a testament to Bilal’s strength as a song writer and the synergy or his band.

The second half of A Love Surreal does become a bit too “ballad-y” though, and compromises the subtle funk of the album’s more up beat first half. Songs such as “Long and Waiting” and “Right At The Core” just bring the album to a lull, while others such as “Ashtray” and “Butterfly” fail to have a gravitas that will pull them beyond album-filler adjectives. Overall though, A Love Surreal offers another quality set of songs from one of soul music’s most reliable craftsmen and talents. These songs are honest, vulnerable, and exhibit Bilal’s constantly modified personal truths. You can bop your head to these songs, grab your lover by the waist and two-step to them, or sip some ‘gnac by a window and reminisce. One can only respect Bilal’s artistic integrity that moves through moods, tones, and topics with insular mastery seldom practiced within much of contemporary R&B.

3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5 out of 5

Many of the greats, if they haven’t fallen off, or been cut short by untimely death, have at least one album that sticks out like the plus-size contestant on America’s Next Top Model. It’s usually a shift towards a more popular sound or an experimental exercise. If we just stick to rap Common has Electric Circus and UMC, The Roots have Phrenology, Yasiin Bey has The New Danger, and Lupe has Lasers.

Well, Big Boi can now join them with Vicious Lies & Dangerous Rumors. An album that arrives near the end of an excellent year of rap music and hits like, well, um, a raw food restaurant in an urban area being gentrified. Two years after the excellent Sir Lucious Left Foot, the funk has been replaced by moody but “bright” EDM. Also while the gangsterisms and pimpology still exist in the lyrics, the sonic component of that content has all but evaporated quicker than rumors of a Three Stacks solo.

Let’s start with the good. “In The A” sounds like two dozen militarized elephants stomping through the streets of downtown Atlanta with T.I., Big Boi and Luda as their generals. All three rap as if their platinum plaques and accolades are still in the distant future. It’s easily one of 2012′s best songs. Opening track “The Thickets” is that classic DF sound full of syrupy soul and organic programming made for lifted light night rides through the city. “Raspberries” is a steady inaudible romp about strippers with plopping drums, water textures, and barren synths that Big Boi, Mouche and Scar warmly croon over. “Lines”, featuring A$AP Rocky and Phantogram, is also a moment where swag-rap and indie electro-pop blend together nicely.

Littered throughout the album, though, are just some down right WTF moments. “She Hates Me”, “CPU”, “Mama Told Me”, and “Tremendous Damage” are all exercises in competent pop that come across contrived or awkward. Big Boi almost sounds like a guest on his own songs, rapping about trite topics over-earnestly or half-heartedly. Just glancing at the song’s guest: Kid Cudi, Kelly Rowland and Bosko, shows that these songs aimed for radio plays, but they’re not even the sound of what’s popular for the next 36 seconds. By the time “Shoes For Running” ends, the rapping aspect of the album all but disappears into the ether of our confused head spaces.

Furthermore, while folks may find songs like “Apple of My Eye”, “Thom Pettie”, and “Objectum Sexuality” (Christ just think of the title of the latter, this is Big Boi we talkin’ ‘bout) as catchy, they are far from experimental. It’s nothing more than contemporary indie pop with new wave and electronic flourishes that have Big Boi as an ornament to their sounds; it’s a damn shame, too, ’cause Killer Mike crushes his verse on “Thom Pettie”.

The album ends with the more normative Big Boi stylings of “Gossip” and “She Said OK”, but the’re the bonus cuts almost as a gift to old fans. Plain and simply, I don’t come to Big Boi for this type of shit. I like my Little Dragon sans rapping just fine and my Big Boi gangster pimp raps full or trunk rattling slappers. I understand why some are very happy with this album, but personally it’s a disappointment. Not to mention that the album never sounds and expresses much of its paranoid title. Save a handful of songs, much of this is heading towards the desktop trash bin.

2.5 out of 5 stars

2.5 out of 5

CHECK!!! The Adderall Admiral has become one of the most fascinating non-mainstream artists of the past few years. Like many young/new rappers, Danny Brown took the post-Hot Boyz Lil’ Wayne template and flooded the Internet with music. But where many just over-saturate the market with redundant and half-assed work, Danny sounds like it’s the last time he’s going to get the opportunity to rap on a song; an urgency within every bar.

Sure his charisma—the hair, the fashion sense, the freaky tales of drugs and sex—add to his persona as a rapper. But that’s  all just the window dressing. Beneath the ’80s hair band rocker starring in a ’70s blaxploitation flick is a layered and complex artist who is one of the most stylistically and technically gifted rappers to rock mics in any era.

Danny Brown has the acute ability to cannibalize trends to feed his aesthetic base and regurgitate one of the most natural, yet guttural, rap approaches of recent memory. He’s the most lucid sexcapades rapper since Ghostface, he’s single-handedly reinvigorated punchline rap by being funny and vulgar, and he fears no beat. He spits over boom-bap, trap, ambient, minimal, and electro sounds like he’s the Honey Boo Boo clan at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Danny’s vocal inflections/characters just are the sweetener to an already flavorful repertoire of flows and content. He sub-structs despair, hope, fantasy, social awareness, street life, and desire in crude and pornographic montages of life that has few equals in a time where many rappers hardly rap: nothing more than vocal ornaments to beats.

But Danny Brown is the whole damn Christmas tree lighting the rave for a supposed coming apocalypse. So if you’re one of the unfortunates who complain about his nasally high-pitched voice or how his tight pants and outlandish outfits make you uncomfortable, jump ship here and click elsewhere. But if you love the art of rap, get ready to have your mouse put to work for the next hour.

We have compiled all of Danny’s digital-12s and guest spots to highlight how, without even dropping an album in 2012, he is this year’s MVP. Whether it be alongside Heems, A$AP Mob, Ab Soul or Don Trip, or rocking dolo over Araab, Evil Nine or Darq E Freaker, Danny Brown showed us why he’s the “microphone methadone”. Here at Potholes we do it for the people… STYLE!

Click below to find out why Danny’s our MVP of 2012.

The original draft for Rare Chandeliers was being formed around the time I wrote our piece on Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II… While reflecting on that album two things dawned on me: one, how over the past 15 years very few rap albums have expressed Bizarre’s type of cathartic fun; and two, that we as music writers sometimes jump through too many hoops to try and reason our tastes. Even when I re-read my review for Bronson and Statik’s LP from last year, I cringed at how hard I tried to justify my love for music that didn’t sound like it was of the now-now, but a re-imagining of sounds passed. So this review will be nothing more than openly bias admiration.

From the moment the “Big Body Bes” intro dramatically hits, you know this is going to be some hilarious raw rap shit, because they “done come a long way from stealing out of Super Markets”. The lead single “The Symbol” sounds like a long lost gem from a blaxploitation flick that never got released. All psychedelic air guitar and humming blues bass for Bronson to spit his fly big boy personality raps. On “Sylvester Lundgren” (don’t let the song title went over your head), Alchemist sounds as if during one of his DMT trips he captured the spirit of The Beatminerz at the height of their powers in 95, and brought it back for Action, Meyhem Lauren and Ag Da Coroner to display the art of emceeing. Blunted bass lines, funky barely audible samples, dusty drums, and raps about taking heads lyrically are the soul of this rap shit.

Than there are the three movements of “Randy The Musical” that Bronson uses to conjure varying images of sex, food, drugs, and street life like paint coming out the cans of legends. ScHoolboy Q joins the street cinema with his raucous energy on “Demolition Man” that basically has Rare Chandeliers at 18 minutes of non-stop fun at this point, with ad-libs like “slow the beat down 30 gigahertz” or lines like “loving girls with African body and Asian face.”

The album only gets better as it moves into the slo-mo pimpery of “Modern Day Revelations” featuring the rap King Cobra Roc Marciano styling over abrupt church organs and a chopped up soulful croon. But the album’s jewel is the Evidence assisted “Bitch, I Deserve You”: a song where both rappers build on the trope of being built for the rap game, while also reminiscing on ex-girls that can only look at them with admiration at their success. Lead by Alchemist’s subdued triumphant horns and chilling piano sample the song is pure rap bliss.

There are no political polemics, social philosophizing, or high-minded concepts and themes on Rare Chandeliers. It’s not trying to be “THEEE ALBUM”. It’s just Bronson, Alchemist, and their friends deep frying that white halibut, with a side of rice, some brews and a sack of pfff and mushrooms producing better results than 99 percent of what’s out there. That lifestyle rap with lovable cartoonish thugging and sex with a smile. It’s a palpable joy that is heard as the duo place moments of the studio sessions after songs with Bronson clowning around singing Soul Glow.

All this and I haven’t even spoken about the menacing second half of “Gateway to Wizardry” featuring an always on point Styles P, or the grizzly bully raps of “Blood of the Goat” featuring favorite Sean P. Objectively speaking I don’t think I could argue Rare Chandeliers is “better” than say R.A.P. Music or good kid, m.A.A.d. city, but it damn sure sits comfortably right next to them. So I end with a shout out “to the Polish sluts / with the gorgeous butts”, Bronsolinho!

4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5 out of 5

As a soon-to-be-dork getting the first hairs on his nut sack, Bizarre Ride was one of the first three rap albums I owned. My sister’s fresh-from-the-Bronx boyfriend (later ex-husband) had dubbed Bizarre, The Main Ingredient, and Black Sunday onto three 60-minute Maxells for me back in mid ’93. I would play those tapes on the bus to and from school, on my shitty swap meet boom-box in my room, and on trips from Van Nuys to South Central with said sister and boyfriend like a fiend hitting the pipe. It was before all the critical analysis, debates, and nostalgia took much of the fun about of being a rap fan. I was still in an age of innocence (whatever that means for a kid growing up in an inner city) and listening to four of the funniest and most agile rappers capture all the slick-exaggerated-braggadocio, dick-without-any-real-pussy personality me and my friends were growing to embody.

The Pharcyde—Imani, Bootie Brown, Fatlip, Slimkid3 and J-Swift—captured not the L.A. by the beach or on a skateboard; or the L.A. in khakis-n-Taylors claiming sets; but the L.A. on the corner after a school day talking shit, playing the cool, and about to kick a freestyle. Right as Death Row put the “You Going To Jail Now!” on rap aesthetics and popular American culture, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde was only concerned with insightful youthful outlandishness over soulful swinging production. They mocked, ignored, and birthed an energy that wasn’t the propulsive but “dying” political vitriol of Public Enemy, KRS, and Cube, or the reactionary “that’s not us” technical wizardry of the Good Life Scene. The Pharcyde pulled from the character of Daisy-era De La, and production stylings of Low End Theory Tribe, to make a more lush, free-form (yet accessible) album that is as dynamic and enjoyable today, as it was 20 years ago.

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For those of us outside of Detroit, the first time we heard Guilty Simpson rap was on Champion Sound’s “Strapped”. He led the song off sounding like a bear calmly eating its prey near a frigid river stream. His bully rap about sticking his legs out in the theater aisle and seeing if you had the courage to ask him to move was as vivid and comedic as vintage Mobb Deep.

As Guilty’s verses began to pollinate the tracks of producers like Dilla, Madlib, and Black Milk for the next three-four years, it was easy to group him into the category of a one-dimensional gangster rapper. It was a rap identity driven home by his 2008 debut Ode To The Ghetto, which was ripe with themes of fists, bitches, robbery, and gun smoke. The album had gusto, but also came across dull at points. Two years later, Guilty and Madlib crafted their disjointed full length OJ Simpson, which had gems like the Dilla tribute “Cali Hills” hidden between the bewildering over-kill interludes. The album came off like great gangster rap on a bad acid trip.

In a way it was beginning to seem that Guilty worked best within single songs, or a group setting, highlighted by his dominating performances on last year’s Random Axe LP. But with little promotion and alongside rap production’s Chevy Charger Apollo Brown, Guilty has crafted his best work to date. Not only is Dice Game a more mature, reflective, narrative-based Simpson, it’s an album that comes across as a complete statement through short and direct songs.

“Let’s Play” wonderfully interpolates ODB’s classic croon at the beginning of “C.R.E.A.M.” for three minutes of Guilty’s machista sex tales. It’s a perfect winter season record in which Apollo shows how to refreshingly flip familiar sounds. Later, “I Can Do No Wrong” is a soulful blast of crunchy horns and G. I. Joe drums that finds Guilty detailing how he’s developed his career path and the difficult decisions he’s made as a result. Near the album’s end, “Never Ending Story” is a stirring narrative of the personal knowledge Guilty has gained in his life over a moving and elegant assortment of strings Apollo places next to each other like a Bearden collage.

Overall, Dice Game is about describing rap as a life choice: an unforgiving game of chance that reaps powerful spiritual benefits and insights, but leaves one stressed and weary. Therefore, with Guilty and Apollo fully understanding their strengths as rapper and producer, the songs on the album have an empowered quality. Sure at times the album’s tone seems to monotonously bleed from one song to the next and Guilty is not everybody’s cup of tea stylistically or technically, but that doesn’t derail the album’s forceful momentum.

It would be difficult to say which track should have been cut, or that “hard-body raps” Guilty is missed even. “How Will I Go”, “Dear Jane” and “Ink Blotches” are great rap records full of earnestness and true school knock that display the raw and refined elements of rap music. I get a sense Dice Game will be left off many list concerning the year’s best, but it shouldn’t be left off your radar. Your speakers and head space will thank you for it.

3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5 out of 5

Street rap is the heart and guts of this rap shit. Even as it continues to occupy a very precarious space in the critical and popular imagination, street rap smirks and stands its ground.  Even when heads take to the internet and voice their disdain for the latest ig’nant rapper to get blog love, they seem to forget the rap of their formative years had healthy doses of robbing, shooting, homophobia, and misogyny. Some forget their favorite rappers—Wu Tang, Mobb Deep, Ice Cube, etc…—were/are on that thug and gangster shit. Most of the time, these complaints are misplaced preferences based on sonic aesthetics rather than content.

Another way to think of things is after Pac and Biggie’s murders, mainstream thuggery and gang banging took a back seat to the jiggy shit. It also became very one dimensional. The star power and music of acts like Ja Rule and 50 Cent drove the point home. Songs about mamas, the good woman, political polemics, or expressing remorse for sinful ways were nearly erased from the format. Also lost were the soul and funk samples that added an ephemeral humanity to the contentious raps. Instead, countless celebratory affairs about guns, drugs, and bitches with catchy hooks and simplified lyrics over “anthemic” street or club productions became the trend. At times it worked, but mostly it was just embarrassing neo-samboism.

Yet, two years ago, Roc Marciano crafted one of the more stellar full-lengths of the internet era with Marcberg. It’s a record that simultaneously seemed to exist from a time past and beyond it. Marcberg was an insular and cerebral album about guns, drugs, bitches and staying fly over lo-fi samples that sounded like they were booming out of a smoky room filled with old furniture and a refurbished SP1200. But this wasn’t a backpacker trying to re-invent the use of a thesaurus over rare grooves; it was a rapper with a pimp’s demeanor ruminating about the pleasures and vices of being in the streets of NYC.

This time around with the help of some friends, Roc Marci follows it up with Reloaded. And it’s a more hallucinatory and unhinged stream-of-consciousness counterpart to its didactic and narrative based predecessor. “Peru” sounds like Roc stole some records from his buddies Gangrene (Alchemist and Oh No) and looped up a drunken batch of fender Rhodes and upright bass to lace with 32 hook-less bars of slick bully talk almost narcotic in its effect.

“Deeper”, crafted by producer of the year Alchemist, is a smooth, deadly melody perfect for Roc’s flow. The drums sound like they are being played at a distance resting under a sweet vocal chop and cascading piano notes that easily cater to the head-nod-factor. The criminal psychedelia continues on “Not Told” featuring Knowledge Pirate and Ka spitting hood vignettes over a raw guitar wail and funky low-end.

Furthermore, where Marcberg excelled through a propulsive and claustrophobic sound, Reloaded is more sparse and hollowed out, creating an ambient but rugged atmosphere. This allows Roc Marci to be almost painterly with his rap technique. Sonic space opens and Roc forms pointillist details of crime and sex that are vivid and vibrant. The beats breathe enough in their minimalism for Marci’s persona and stylized patterns to command full attention. Ironically the album’s coldest gems are its earliest leaks and most fleshed out sounds: “76” and “Emeralds”. The former a hypnotic ode to his formative years, and the latter a sinister Arch Druids-produced banger where Roc outlines why he ain’t one to fuck with.

Simply put, Roc does not come across in the least pressured or flustered by the acclaim and expectations the blogosphere created with Marcberg. This go-around, he seems even more cocksure lyrically, leaning through the album with a cognac in hand and blowing blunt smoke in the face of lames like it was always meant to be this way. While Reloaded may be a bit too abstract for some, and the sequencing makes for a bit of a disjointed listen, it’s such an evocative and stylized form of street rap. It also claims space in the internet rap world calm and authoritatively. Drugs, guns, bitches and nice threads ain’t sounded this smooth and cool since, well, that era in rap some can never let go of.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5