Very lo-fi, underdeveloped Geti release affirming the ennui he's been affecting in his rhymes for so long.
Indie-blend of many currents Geti reigns in/over well. Hodgepodge of sounds, all of which he expands on elsewhere.
Kenny Segal-prod Kenny Dennis tape is understatedly fantastic. Once upon a time is a different vibe from Mr. Segal and is outstanding, even amidst a rich history of collaborative gold. He is the illest producer of all time & freaks those horns somn nasty.
Geti's content follows KD well-after his separation from Jueles, easing his toes into loving again. Alas, it is doomed. Forget Kenny; it's a byzantine ode to the frustrations of love in modernity. The arms with which we hold ... read more
Wild free-maniacal improvisation in that lengthy track; Geti often defaults to older verses, frequent redesigns of former scribes. It's the same pretense from which Ajai was swindled; Geti had requested beats with which to remix an older song, then melded them and freestyled half the tape over it. We might never see that demo, but this, sharing the ethos, is close enough.
Annoying and vapid, it takes an increasingly common kind of narcissism to believe anybody wants to hear about your little life for nearly two hours. He means to draw a juxtaposition between himself at 29 and 39, returning to the ville at both ages, but all he shows is how very little he's actually changed. He's still boring, still refusing to rap about anything, still only got battle rap tier bars. Whatever. We'll see him in 3-4 years.
Legends grow old and lose the ear for beats they did once hold. Tale as old as.., well, them.
Recorded humbly, as though the strums were mere coincidence, Geti affects his sympathies through his blues. He always had a thing, rooting for those washed-up wrasslin retirees. I wonder what Jim Duggan is up to these days.
There is, of course, something to be said about possession-as-identity, as every interaction is today mediated by our suffocating milieu. The world ended in 1914 and we've been living through the permanently-renovated ruins. Nothing ever happens in rigor mortis. I still linger on my old earth.
These superb biographical bodies of work Geti King committed himself to are oft vandalized with hagiographical π€π©π’π³π’π€π΅π¦π³ π΄π΅πΆπ₯πͺπ¦π΄. How acrid. No, look, listen, characters are hallucinations cooked up by Big Realism™ to distract you from the artwork's form. I do not care for quotations regarding Ajai's quotidian quixotism, nor transcriptions of KD's temptations.
Ajai is not the titular sneakerhead, not the hypebeast par ... read more
ICE9 continues a winning streak with another boundary-pushing etheral release. The tazzianmalik-produced mixtape sees a palpable House influence infused into her already hazy brand of eclectic cloud rap. I do prefer the prior Drum and Bass beats of past LPs, but her penchant for innovation is admirable and I'm wishfully thinking of a larger, longer, more cohesive project that can blend these sounds or otherwise move between them in a way that is not jarring. She has her work cut out for ... read more
The lacustrine anti-mainstream ethos here falters, giving way to some more popped-out tropes. It works. Grind It Out is catchier than a bitch & The Like Song is a nice slow grind love song. More heartfelt than the bulk of modern R&B, even as Psychosiz croons about cleavage.
One of the earliest outings from the then-unknown Open Mike Eagle, troika'd here by fellow Blowedians Psychosiz and Dumbfoundead, the trio deliver on themes introduced into the zeitgeist by other Blowedians and affiliates with a pun-filled aquatic LP. Filet of Soul, Adventure Time, Phlowtations, DJ DW — the underground as underwater was not a new metaphor. But the style is elevated; Poet's first spell.
"Came out at eight, was leaning on the railing / Kept hearing the waves crashing beneath me / Back and forth, just rephrasing what they were saying / Over and over, and doing that repeatedly / [...] Every time they'd go back out to sea / It's like they'd draw a little bit more out of me."
Okay, youse won,, you burnt me out,,, congratulations β½β½
Some days I rap like Latyrx.
Blackalicious affiliates Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truthspeaker are in peak form here: LB ... read more
INF is uninteresting, yet to find his footing on these glitchy vino beats. The odd vino verse here and there are alright, could've gone on most any of his EPs from last year.
Fanon nails this dreary modulated jazz, a jaunt of junkanoo to match. Unfortunately, Obi is the hangup here. This tone and mode of delivery was well-acclimated for the variety plate that was some other releases, FLDSZN especially, but here it cuts through like a blunt, cold knife in frozen butter. Ironic he would rap about changing up his style again, to differentiate himself from the 'biters,' as this album really could've benefited from another style change.
It's hard to really say anything when they didn't. I was waiting for the electro-croons and filler lines to end, for the adlibs to be absconded, for some substance to come out this subterfuge. Then the album ended.
I sound like a broken record, but truly, Geti grasps lethargy like no other. It's the rhymes written by an artist answering a call that never comes; there is nothing compelling him to write, yet he does. It's not fixing anything, yet he does. Strums of his future avant-folk endeavors are present. Nothing is confined. Turntables or guitars, the ethos is the same.
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Recent Review Comments
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant Every reason a person goes to therapy today is related to the system. Obviously. Nothing exists outside it. There isn't anything else to go to therapy for."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant I am not. Psychology's origins are in asylums, straitjackets, the carceral state. To this day it exists to criminalize and pathologize difference. This is not a matter of simplification, but of history, and my point has already been made by the bulk of the post-modernists."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant They don't, though. Psychology has always been a weapon against the fight for radical change. People are not capable of fighting when they're not drowning in misery. They get complacent. Therapy can help people cope — that's bad. I am against the industry built around coping. The same bastards who did this to you are the ones telling you to cope with it.
There is no healing here. We are still in the machine. There is only getting used to it — and that, I find abhorrent."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant No, I have an issue against every system of therapy. For precisely the reasons I described; it is the process by which individuals are made to assume responsibility for systemic failures. Training the Koala who's tree has been chopped down to carry on, despite."
On Serengeti - KENNYV
"Dyknow what I mean?"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@Mmmvbnn2 When did I attack the listeners?"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@Mmmvbnn2 You'll notice I used the term therapy-rap in my review, rather than therapeutic. Because, again, my issue isn't that it's peaceful or whatever, but that it's a regurgitation of the stupid uselessness of therapy as an industry. Its grand arc is one of *surrender.* Of *acclimating to the world* instead of *changing it*"
On Vince Staples - Cry Baby
"@dj_digo I may have had a phase"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@handsomenapkin There are exactly two sentences pertaining to audience perception and both are tied back to the content of the album."
On Vince Staples - Cry Baby
"@DallasDaMusical I dont think it sounds very good"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@ALLcaps000 He hated the socialists of his day, and he was right to. They were resentful crypto-christians and he saw everything wrong with them. As did Marx."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@ALLcaps000 A communist."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@JohnCena1337 By therapeutic I don't mean soothing, calming per se; I mean reminiscent of therapy."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@JohnCena1337 Then I think the question answers itself. Obviously I would like an album that makes me feel good. But at that point you've abstracted the term therapeutic far beyond anything resembling my critique, which regards the mindsets and language pushed by the actual therapy industry and their application here, in this album."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@JohnCena1337 What does the quality of being therapeutic mean to you? To me that is a description of the lyrical content of the album — to which my answer is a resounding NO."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@ALLcaps000 I am not a nihilist. There's a war going on outside and the lines have already been drawn — through you. Recognition of "the self" — whatever that means — as the battleground. The only way you can attain inner peace in these conditions is through submission."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@Mmmvbnn2 My point is not that it's *wrong* to say that the album is therapeutic, quite the opposite. It *is* therapeutic and that is *bad.* His music now is bland and pacifying, the album's message is a disgusting response to the status quo and being "at peace with yourself" is acrid to me."
On JAY-Z - The Black Album
"@Bot10Exists I did."
On Serengeti & Polyphonic - Dont Give Up
"@hazyvizions Always funny what people cling to. This was one of my least favorites."
On RicofromJupiter's review of R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Pages
"@RicofromJupiter T.A.Z. by Hakim Bey π"
On JPEGMAFIA - EXPERIMENTAL RAP
"@usur_disc350 When did I say Future's misogyny can't be criticized? What I said was that his art is worthwhile and it isn't pointless. Peggy's is pointless. He has no substance, he only whines and reduces women to punchlines. He makes them platitudes out of earnest."
On JPEGMAFIA - EXPERIMENTAL RAP
"@CutieZenUwU I'm not going to argue with a Polish teenager about what is and isn't racist. Your total lack of respect for trap is self-evident and you're willfully disengaging with the point to screed about the genre. You're a vulture."
On JPEGMAFIA - EXPERIMENTAL RAP
"@CutieZenUwU "Any trap artist for that matter" is a racist caricature. Any circle in which I am notorious is comprised entirely of losers.
Art can and does handle misogyny in ways that are interesting and revealing. Future is a misogynist as an expression and an extension of his own pain. All of these rap personas are characters, inseparable from their bodies of work. Future's art is worthwhile. This is drivel. There is no point to the misogyny, no statement, no expression. The whole thing was recorded — seemingly — so he could hear his own voice."
On J. Cole - The Fall-Off
"@DivineAura Hip-Hop was built out of the exact opposite, a sibling to funk evolving out of jazz and vocalese. It started with scatting. The gritty realism was a byproduct of labels and their making the genre more marketable. You can talk about real issues, personal experience, expression, etc, without being a realist. Most rappers do. J. Cole does not."
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