A collection of samples, sounds and voices so incredibly diverse and ambitious, a record so completely all-in, is rare.
As a hip hop effort, Quakers is one of the most consistently refreshing albums in recent memory.
The album itself is a behemoth that takes some listening dedication to unwrap and to assign meaning to - and it's an effort that's well worth it.
This is recommended for purists of the genre, a fun throwback which won't be imitated again this year.
Ambitious messes are the best kind, and riding out the less-interesting moments is worth it in the long run.
If you like your rap homespun, rich, physical and all ‘summer-in-NYC ’95’, it’s a dream.
As with any project this exhaustive, Quakers is rather hard to swallow in one sitting.
The self titled debut album of hip hop supergroup Quakers, which consists of 3 producers: Fuzzface (Portishead’s Geoff Barrow), Katalyst and 7-Stu-7. They essentially assembled 35 MCs to rap over about 41 beats. So yeah this is a big project, at 41 tracks it clocks in with 1hour and 10 minutes. The production is heavily inspired by the biggest underground producers of the time. Most notably it sounded a lot like something El-p and Madlib would do. Most of the Rappers featured here are ... read more
At a whopping 41 tracks, it would be impossible to maintain the blunt impact and quality control of the opening 7 tracks. Oh, but if it could, QUAKERS would score an easy 100.