Needle Drops Down Memory Lane
Some thoughts on being a rap music fan and critic. +reviews of junclassic & Uncommon Nasa, ShunGu
I can't begin to guess the number of times I've listened to GZA's "Liquid Swords," the opening title track from his 1995 sophomore solo album. There was a time I probably could have recited the introductory Shogun Assassin monologue with ease, but in the 30 years since it dropped I've listened to thousands of projects, rendering my memory somewhat unreliable and cluttered.
However, I absolutely remember where I was when I first heard "Liquid Swords," riding around Queens with my high school friend Bobby in his dad's car. We were both Wu-Tang fans, naturally, but neither of us were exactly flush with cash. So whenever a cassette made it into the vehicle, it would get some serious play. This happened with The Prodigy's 1997 album The Fat Of The Land, which is where I initially encountered Kool Keith outside of Ultramagnetic MC's (and didn't immediately make the connection). Often overlooked opposite his sampled appearance on the UK act's hit single "Smack My Bitch Up," his dope "Diesel Power" feature comes third on the tape's A-side, right after the Keith Flint x Maxim jam "Breathe." Coming from that car's speakers, the bass and the bars hit as hard as the cool night air through the rolled-down window.
A sense of place can define an album. Precisely where you catch a song–or even an artist–and really, truly hear it can lock in a memory, one replete with its own eternal soundtrack. The street fair Gravitron that blared Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man" as it spun my adolescent ass around quickly comes to mind. So too does the pool hall presence of Busta Rhymes' "Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check" on the jukebox as I attempted to impress nearby girls my age with my admittedly middling billiard skills.
This applies even today, well into my ever-contracting career as a hip-hop journalist/critic. Whether out in the world or at home on the couch, I'm almost always listening to something in headphones, and at times that means associating what I'm playing with where I'm playing it.
For instance, last year I was on a mid-morning Amtrak train heading from New York to Philly to catch one of Westside Gunn's first Heels Have Eyes events. This was back when those were more of a concert than a wrestling promotion. It was the day that J. Cole's Might Delete Later dropped by surprise, and doing my due diligence I went straight for "7 Minute Drill." Though my general opinion of the North Carolina rapper isn't exactly a favorable one, I'm a longtime lover of rap beef and, relatively more recently, a big fan of whatever Conductor Williams does. Yet dissecting the song on my trip down didn't cement it in my mind. In fact, I can hardly recall the particulars of the artist-disavowed, since-removed Kendrick Lamar targeted diss track or even much about the beat switch behind it. To be honest, it wasn't that memorable to begin with.
What I'll never forget is that very same night, during the HHE festivities at Theatre of Living Arts, was that Williams didn't play "7 Minute Drill" during his set. And later, towards the curfew-mandated end, when mixtape hosting icon DJ Drama was behind the decks, he unleashed Future's "Like That," letting it ride through the epochal Lamar verse that prompted Cole's regrettable response. If you were to measure the world in needle drops, that one was downright seismic, a megaton bomb blast that I'll remember forever.
junclassic & Uncommon Nasa, Music To My Eyes
As underground hip-hop heads know, we've lost a number of Monsta Island Czars in recent years, including Kong, Spiega, X-Ray, and King Geedorah himself, MF DOOM. The tragic, sudden passing of rapper junclassic, who went by the moniker of Gabarah in that group, earlier this week adds yet another unfortunate name to that list of the crew's departed talents. While we should anticipate further posthumous efforts from the Queens native down the line, the previously scheduled release of Music To My Eyes offers a more immediate expression of his impressively aberrant emcee skills. Done in partnership with producer Uncommon Nasa, an indie mainstay and Staten Island denizen, the 12 track outing amplifies and elevates the outerboro duo's combined gifts via songs like "1NCE B4" and the digi-reggae hybrid "Roots And Culture." When jun fantasizes about delivering street justice over the cavernous bap of "Snake Charming" and pulling back the veil of conspiracy amid the cinematic pulp bombast of "The Factory," it's hard not to lock in. Taking the mic as he sees fit, Nasa riffs on his rock tastes with the maximalist"Prologue" and the Run-DMC-esque Guillotine Crowns collab "Glitches." Voice memos from junclassic included here now carry profound weight as well, his anecdotes about police interactions and musings on the responsibility of rap veterans to the culture more resonant than intended.
ShunGu, Faith In The Unknown
Producer-led projects often serve as much needed correctives to the rapper-centric focus in hip-hop, giving the beatmakers behind the bars a chance to raise their profiles and spotlight their skills. Rarely, however, do such releases feel like real albums, the disparate voices of featured emcees and singers having the somewhat undesirable effect of directing listeners away from the instrumental intricacies. In the case of ShunGu, a Lex Records signee out of Belgium, he genuinely puts himself first even with an impressive guest list on Faith In The Unknown. He indulges in nostalgic R&B throwbacks like "Stay Alive" with Pink Siifu and "The Wind Must've Heard Your Voice Once," and infuses a breezy soul sensibility into "Serti Dial" with Navy Blue and "Thin Line" with Chester Watson. Yet as distinctive as those named vocalists are, his command over the aural aesthetics here keeps even the more idiosyncratic of the bunch as elemental parts of the woven fabric rather than as gaudy promotional logos. Few places is this more apparent than on "Talk To The Mass," where Fly Anakin and Goya Gumbani expertly spit while Fatima breathily soars, yet ShunGu's looped horns, slashing strings, and deep basslines somehow dominate.
Three new tracks to snack on...
al.divino, "ITS ALOT GOIN ON"
Sonnyjim & Morriarchi, "New Jersey Drive (feat. Fly Anakin)"
Sadistik & NOWHERE2RUN, "Kiss The Ring (feat. Cage)"
