Within this apparently flippant collage of sound there is a fairly deep heart and soul. It's a like maximalist, rapidly changing, funk-infused DJ-set. However, it takes funk's core ability to hypnotize by letting you enter into a groove and drags you through sonic landscapes made both of the internal and the external world. It's a love letter to Nigerian music, while also weeping for it, and asking you in between one chaotic head bob and the next to shed a tear as well. Its ... read more

Sharif keeps on capturing a deranged feeling with his rapping. The way his voice reverberates and is often doubled gives the impression of being trapped in his head and hearing a subconscious echo each time a the continuous flux of thoughts happens to stop by to form a sentence. It's reflected in his writing too. It's among the most abstract stuff the genre has to offer, and yet it's still poignant in its imagery. Child Actor's production puts his already deep voice deep ... read more

𝙾𝚗𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚐 '𝚝𝚒𝚕 𝙸'𝚖 𝚏𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚜
𝚂𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚞𝚒𝚜𝚑
𝙷𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝙱𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚐𝚊 𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚜?
𝙷𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚖𝚊𝚍 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 ... read more

Among the finer distillations of the dusty aesthetic of the abstract hip hop scene. Here the beats and loops often reach a feeling akin to that of the ethereal. Distant choirs, small chimes, wooden flutes, piano trills, reverb-drenched bass. It's a base on which Mach & company spit in weird jagged flows, sometimes riding weightlessly the divine, other times stomping on it.

The best example of all I said is of course, 383 Myrtle. It's in a definite contention with the best beats ... read more

"It's always cold inside the place I go alone and hide
Stuck with facin' my lonely pride in the basement"

Imagine this slew of spite from a person that's sitting in the corner of a dark room. It's what would come out of the Man of the Underground if he was a rapper instead of a 19th century Russian man. It's a moment of reflection that shows quite finely the pendulum typical of spiteful moments between wrath and sorrow, which correspond to the dichotomy ... read more

Texture is maybe music's most peculiar feeling. It's among the strongest synesthetic abilities of the medium and when explored properly it can cause some of the most visceral reactions as well.
Here, the pure mastery of such art is paired with Kelela's voice among all, which has the immense capability of exuding the mind-bending sensation of a gentle touch, which in turn is made all the more lush and sultry by the each deep reverberating beat and synthline. It's a weave that ... read more

One's own upbringing, with all its struggles and small moments of happiness, resides mostly under the blanket of subconsciousness. Yet, it defines our choices for us. It makes the "us" that does the choosing in the first place. We owe a lot to that long gone past, but we owe to it just as much as it weighs on us, as it makes up part of the societal burden we carry around. Ka's entire oeuvre feels like a response to that burden. He knows that even though it lies dormant ... read more

Every aesthetic judgement you'll ever make that prides on its "objectivity" is in some way connected to two paradigms found in the late 19th and early 20th century: those being romanticism and modernism's views on what makes "good" art.

The case brought by romantic thinkers revolves around the notion of authenticity in art, as a genuine reflection of certain states of mind or moods. For them the genius is the one who's best able to "translate" his ... read more

The whole spectrum of this abstract hip hop stuff is in here. From the sorrowful to the braggadocious, without many skipped beats. Speaking of beats, there is a geniune sense of spectrality in here. Each beat is haunted, as if we're hearing the memories contained in the dust of each sample. Drums are often distant and hit like an unexpected knock at the door while you are alone at home. Ka's song makes me feel quite emotional each time.

Last album felt like a love letter to southern hip hop. This feels like an attempt at revivalism. It's well done, it captures well the aesthetic at hand, but it feels a bit devoid of the life and fun of KOTMS2.

It’s cold these days. It’s fairly paralyzing for me. It removes a lot of my willpower to do anything really. Everything I feel like doing (which isn’t much) seems to be “misdirected”, so I mostly end up doing nothing. It’s a truly terrible feeling perpetuating over and over.

Yesterday I went for a walk. There was a small enclosure with four bumper cars in it. Only one kid was playing. He clearly didn’t have the craziest sort of fun while going back and ... read more

If you’ve ever taken a walk in your life, then this album has something for you.
If you’ve ever felt lost in your life, then this album has even more in store for you.

Quella cosa ineffabile della musica è qui presente. Forse quest’album è il posto dove sono andati a nascondersi i titolari fantasmi. Alcuni si trovano nei brevi momenti di silenzio tra le note di chitarra in Can I Have You For Myself, altri si nascondono dietro la distorsione vocale dell’autotune di Dead Weight. Stanno anche sotto il secchio percosso alla fine di In My Town ma non stanno nel pompelmo, il quale è stato purtroppo spremuto completamente. Ogni ... read more

I, as many people that have a passion for "weird music", am an emotionally unregulated person. I feel quite strongly the need for escapism in my life. I fear boredom, and what comes with it. Specifically the peculiar movement of the mind that makes its eye turn inward, thus breaking the peace of the natural flux of life. You get reminded of your own feelings, and often those feelings aren't the best. The options you have when facing such emergence is to either find more ... read more

It's a perfectly enjoyable album, especially good for washing dishes, university taxes stuff and showering

I think that the discussions about the outer boundaries of hip hop are utterly worthless if you have any sort of pretence to actually delineate anything. Genres are a result of our pattern seeking brains and its need to put labels on things and group them together whenever it’s possible. Regardless of this, it can be a fun discussion. Because here, the notion of hip hop is pushed. A lot. The internal sense of “definition” isn’t always accurate, but it’s the best we ... read more

The deeper in you go into this record the more a peculiar feeling of uneasiness builds up. There is often contrast to some of these beats, like a melody that feels strained or some extremely syncopated percussions making the rhythm feel sluggish. The chopping of the samples oozes discomfort at other times.

In this album alone there are multiple verses that are in the conversation for being some of the best written in the history of the genre. Mos on Re:Definition, on Thieves in The Night and in Twice inna Lifetime, Kweli's second verse on K.O.S. as well.

I think this density of insane verses is only found in records that are around Illmatic or 36 Chambers' level of fame. The amount of love poured in pretty much every rhyme here is astounding. Everything hip hop, or even everything ... read more

Nell’unire ambient e noise, si va inevitabilmente ad inciampare sui paradigmatici scalini posti alla creazione di ambo i generi. Per quanto riguarda la musica ambient, Brian Eno, dall’alto del suo esserne il demiurgo, disse a proposito della raison d'être del genere:

«La musica ambient è pensata per indurre calma e uno spazio per pensare. Deve essere in grado di adattarsi a molti livelli di attenzione d'ascolto senza imporne uno in particolare; deve ... read more

It's like a journey through a sea of hyper-specific, indescribable moods. The sluggish flow of his raps, together with the reverberating choppy samples and warm bass, come together with MIKE's peculiar earnestness. Thus, the album plays exactly like what it essentially is: a very young and smart artist with his need to air out his own grievances. It is hungry in the exact way that albums from young artists often are: you can see how it dabbles with the feeling of having people listen ... read more