God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It

I'm already incredibly biased when it comes to Backxwash so just take this with a grain of salt but....OHHHHH HELL YES.

Backxwash takes the "Witchhop" label and darker themes of her last album to create her most haunting and devious sounding album yet. From the cries of "oh god no!" In the instrumental to shouting how she fucks with black magic, it sounds like the soundtrack to a trans 70s pulp horror film. This is some of her best beats yet with electric guitars, dungeon synth and screams of dispair painting this grin portrait of fear and horror.

But on the contrary, I've found that Backxwash's confident delivery and talk about proudly enbracing satanic imagery and "taboo" subjects like black magic and the occult gives it this excellent feel of accepting your self as "the other" and realizing that this since of "othership" gives you an extreme strength and power over your self or the world. Whether that othership be being trans, black, a woman, a witch, whatever, this album feels like a cleansing of oneself at times. Just walking straight into a fire and walking out the other side completely unharmed.

That's not to say this album doesn't feature deep and depressing subject matter, the song "Into the Void" talks about the fear of simply walking down the street and the intense paranoia that seperates you from fellow humans. And the closer "Redemption" opens with the profound "feel like you lost a son, but you gained a daughter...you think I broke your heart, I think it's for survival."

As a massive horror fan, a massive Backxwash fan, a massive fan of music that speaks to me like this, hell, a fan of everything this album does, I can confidently say this is one of my favorite rap albums of the year. An INTENSE piece of art that only leaves you with one single thought.

"Damn I want to fuck this system up."