The frontiersmen come home and still don't front. Shockadoom blends older experimentation with jazz instrumentation with those more recent conscious tropes best done in the West. "We will never fall the fuck off we promise," reaffirmed. Contemporaneous solo efforts did clearly take the bulk of their focus, though.
Bizzart manages to say essentially nothing of interest; lamentations on race relations, raps about raps, fashioned to an unconventional spoken-word aligned flow that falls flat over conventional production.
The jazzman ethos is here forgotten; too in-line with the conscious West Coast releases of the day, as the Fellowship follows the trends they had once set.
"You're not from the Castle, you're not from the village, you are nothing. Unfortunately, though, you are something, a stranger."
— Kafka
Bloomitudinous ways sweeping my days blue as of late. Admittedly I've been backed off Backwoodz by recent revelations. Longer piece on that soon, format pending. Indeed, Bloom is the mood of the era. The style of the day. Honestly, lord, this whole business had annulled my anualism; how am I meant to wise this doom? This is all ... read more
Ill sonics blending lower key lo-fi haze with classic catchy West Coast rhythms, but let's be real, conscious rap failed us. Nauseous gnostic self-importance as subject matter makes me Bored Stiff. sorry.
Quintessential Blowedian release. Chief among many a quaint essential LP, Driver loosies & rarities are here distributed deftly for only those deaf enough to hear. I don't live like Them. I welcome my soundtrack.
Synthy withdrawals from well-formulated poptimistic escapades. Somewhere between Kaleidosocope and Dont Give Up; two dope projects that don't need to be crossed.
Tender pop tape that builds on currents Geti has been processing — most Aeolian — for an eon now. I didn't expect to enjoy his singing so much. A means-tested medicine chest kept close in breast pocket throughout, a most supportive gallery.
Jvly takes the many sounds of the defrag-adjacent underground, ties them neatly into a bow and adorns a pipebomb with it. The tropes are pushed to their extremes, nothing in moderation; that would do a disservice to the feelings captured. We all captured.
At it's best when Nosdam's nostrums collapse into the classic hazed malaise, emulating the bennies Kenny keeps popping.
What's understood don't gotta be said. What's said don't gotta be understood.
My understanding of art is as follows — to my most discerning disciples, I do apologize, but I must be digestible for a moment — art is a process of conversation between piece and observer. In this conversation both parties are canvas, both apply their palettes, paints, preferences, perspectives, performances to the other. The piece in the view of the observer is altered just as the ... read more
Vayda is comfortable, but stagnating. Every one of her major projects these days has at least one hamfisted feature, seemingly intended as a pull factor for broader audiences. I understand the hunger, but it's only famished.
Geti has long had an affinity for those washed-up wrasslin retirees; Duggan in the dugout, The Whip sips whimsy. Senseirengeti has mastered the dim mak! and has used it on himself. Some say he was enlightened. Others say he was a shithead. For this, he is anointed.
The consecration is collaborative. This most dope trinity is that holy water that follows listerine. Lushly byzantine; in case of emergency, breaks philistines.
Sufjan does not fear death. He follows and leads the emir emeritus ... read more
Malaisily I blow my stinging nose and remember to forget any lingering hopes. I bend me my guitar strings over dumb, butted head and like those mountain goats, too, I chew. I do miss Jim Duggan.
Tender poems spoken over well-populated production yet absent is the poptimism of his early 2010's. Keeps me very warm during wintertime [I heard it on the news].
It's not just that it's poorly produced, nor that none of the emcees have enough personality to stand out from each other, nor that it meanders on long after it should. It's also just not very funny.
A surprise-drop mixtape from the homie Departure to headstone the year and precede Work of Artist I Love You — my early pick for a 2026 favorite — exceeds expectations. The degree to which Departure is improving is indicative. Keep your eyes out & ears peeled.
Anders Holm-intrusions aside, the Kenny Dennis LP offers some of the most engaging forays into the titular character thus far, surpassed perhaps only by the illest cuts off Dennehy.
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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 👁"
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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