Album Reviews: Master Holy & Ade Hakim - Blood Brother, and Caleb Giles - Under The Shade
If you hadn’t already figured it out from the steady stream
of albums released this year from the likes of Slauson Malone, MIKE, and the
just issued collaboration between the London-based rapper and producer Rago Foot and King Carter Slums—there has never been a better time to direct your
attention to the underground, independent, genre-bending rap music that is
coming out of New York right now.
Either directly associated with the respective collectives
Standing on The Corner or sLUms, or somehow loosely connected, these artists
have seemingly gone out of their way to provide an alternative to much of the
rap music that is within the popular culture right now—breathing exuberance
into a genre that become stagnant and boring for long periods of time, and
turning heads by making music that is both innovative and meaningful—a stark
and welcomed contrast to the current crop of inexplicably popular Soundcloud
rappers of ambiguous ethnicity and face tattoos.
Released within days of each other, there are now two more staggeringly
brilliant and thought-provoking albums added to the growing body of work for
this group of friends and collaborators.
*
Shouted out briefly, but memorably, on “Nowhere2go,” by Earl Sweatshirt (“Nowadays I be with Sage and
with Six-press, ya dig?”), the artist formerly known as Sixpress now goes
under the name, Ade Hakim. It’s the name he used when releasing On to Better Things last fall, and it’s
the way he’s credited as the executive producer of and featured artist on a
handful of the tunes from Blood Brother,
a dizzying 10 song collection released by Hakim’s actual blood brother, Rasheed
Dixon, under the moniker Master Holy.
Hakim, as a producer, sticks very closely to the aesthetic
of a number that his fellow sLUms collaborators work with—Blood Brother, touted as being recorded in The Bronx, is not as
lo-fi as an album by MIKE, per se, but it does have that homemade, slightly
ramshackle feeling, both in the construction of the beats, as well as in the
way the vocals were recorded and then later mixed in.
In contrast, though, Blood
Brother is nowhere near as dark or pensive of a listen as, say, MIKE’s most
recent effort, Tears of Joy, or last
year’s War in My Pen; no, far from
it—Blood Brother is a damn near
jubilant and celebratory affair from beginning to end.
Like all off the performers with association to both
Standing on The Corner and sLUms, both Hakim and Dixon are in their early to
mid 20s, though you can hear in Dixon’s voice almost as soon as the album
begins, that he has a cadence that is beyond his years—and there are moments
throughout where his voice is very, very
reminiscent of how a young Gary Grice—The GZA—sounded on the seminal Liquid Swords.
Blood Brother,
more or less, never ceases in its energy—it is always pushing itself forward,
with the ending of one song and the beginning of another often colliding. The
album opens with a bit of sampled dialogue about how time is an illusion (an
interesting concept to think about) prior to the beginning of the time
stretched “DREAM,” which finds Dixon’s voice sliding back and forth between
heavy manipulation, against a off kilter, pitch shifted beat. “DREAM”
seamlessly segues into the slithering “Peter Pan”—with a cavernous echo added onto
the vocal track, it is one of the songs on the album that exudes the
aforementioned lo-fi, home recorded, truly underground aesthetic.
Musically, Hakim, as a the constructor of these beats, is
doing some pretty interesting stuff—occasionally tapping into something dark or
dissonant, like the borderline mournful “Scars,” which is by far the most
fascinating thing on the album from a production standpoint with the way it
hazily sways with both something soulful and something mildly unnerving
happening inside its all too brief 90 seconds. But overall, Blood Brother is meant, from an
arrangement standpoint anyway, to be triumphant—a point that is made, if you
hadn’t already figured it out, by the glitchy, hypnotic, and celebratory final
track, “Back to The Basics.”
It’s also on “Back to The Basics” that Dixon doesn’t so much
deliver a ‘key lyric’ to the album, but gives us one of the more memorable
lines that also maybe is the best example of his confident, possibly
self-aggrandizing, stream of conscious style: “No Magnums—I attack raw,”
he says, stretching out that ‘aw’ in ‘raw,’ to rhyme with “I stay gifted—no Santa Claus.”
Like so many albums—specifically rap albums that I’ve
listened to this year—Blood Brother
is terribly short in its running time. It clocks in just slightly over 20
minutes, but what it lacks in length, it makes up for with its commitment to a
specific energy, as well as a celebration of both a musical movement, and of
actual brotherhood. It’s production values and beats are ‘lo-fi’ enough to be
interesting, but are never inaccessible, and Blood Brother is a compelling, highly enjoyable experience that
never tires after multiple listens.
*
I’ve seen a lot in these 21 summers…
Arriving in the album’s ninth song, “What’s Mine,” the key
to understanding Under The Shade, the
third album from Caleb Giles, is in that lyric.
From the moment it begins, it should come as no surprise to
you to learn that Giles is a member of the ‘genre negative’ collective,
Standing on The Corner—from a production standpoint, the distortion and
manipulation occurring during Under The
Shade’s opening track, “Sunshine,” is very indicative of the Standing on
The Corner aesthetic.
Outside of playing saxophone in SOTC, he has become, rather
quickly, an important, thought provoking voice in this underground movement of
rappers and producers coming out of New York—a voice that has undergone an
impressive and very noticeable amount of growth since his debut, Tower, released just two years ago.
The face that adorns the cover of Under The Shade is one that, by all accounts, has seen a lot.
That’s what the album, at its core, is about. Like Blood Brother, Under The
Shade is brutally short—only 23 minutes long—but within that short amount
of time, Giles never deviates from the conceit of this collection: that
struggling is a part of the human condition—but there is also a glimmer of
hope.
Under The Shade,
as possibly expected, given its thematic elements and running time, and as it
should, given the intelligence of Giles’ lyrics, is absolutely unrelenting in
its momentum and its messages—right out of the gate to, Giles never lets up,
with the album’s first three tracks running nearly seamlessly together. With
“Sunshine” setting the tone, and serving as a slow burning and eerie intro, it
concludes after a mere two minutes with a blast of radio static and commercials
pulled from over the airwaves, including a booming voice uttering the phrase ‘New York’s finest,’ and just before the
track cuts out, a voice promising us a ‘timeless
tale,’ and a ‘theatre experience like
none other.”
“Nothing shines out
here,” Giles says in a breathless verse at the start of “Too,” the album’s
second track that builds a steady pace after a warbled, manipulated, very
SOTC-esque production technique. He follows that up by saying, “So I’m in my room, cutting up these rhymes
out here; like my neighbor at the stove, cutting lines out here. I’m in the
middle, trying to keep my fucking mind’s eye clear.” It’s a stark
juxtaposition—a device that Giles uses throughout Under The Shade, delivered in a raspy yet youthful voice that walks
the line between pensive and exuberant, set atop a sharp percussive sound that
echoes out, twinkling synthesizers, and a devastatingly mournful piano sample
that, more or less, makes the entire song.
“Too” collides directly into the opening of “Gather,” which
picks things up in a different direction, and sets off with a different,
slightly less somber—though incredibly reflective—direction.
All of 50 seconds long, “Gather”1 wastes none of
them as Giles explains what is, more or less, at the core of this record—living
in poverty, the desire for something much larger, and the concern over those
dreams. “Damn, I wish I had $100—I wish
it all made sense…I wish a dream didn’t cost a dollar—but is a dream still a
dream when you’re rich?,” he asks, without providing any real easy answer,
and that’s just in the song’s opening stanza. It’s this kind of mentality—self
aware of your upbringing and what that means, the undying want for more, and
that anxiety and confusion over what happens if you ever ‘make it,’ that Giles
has inserted throughout Under The Shade—making
it the kind of album that, yes, is a lot of fun at times to listen to, but
there are reminders throughout of the serious nature behind it.
Musically, Under The
Shade becomes energetic and highly percussive on “Blxckberry,” then eerie,
anxious, and slightly mournful on the skittering “Roundtable”—another song
where Giles references the crux of the album: “I’m wishing—on that well water penny flippin’, that I could dip my cup
and watch it runneth over drippin’.”
Following the halfway point, which features a very brief, though remarkably
fascinating interlude (maybe one of the most interesting things on here,
honestly) called “Syl’s Song,” Giles keeps that same energy as he brings the
album to its reflective, melancholic closing. “Quicksand,” jittery, infectious,
and enthusiastic in its execution, features a memorable, hazy and blunted
feature from Livingston Matthews—a.k.a. Pink Siifu, the man who, truthfully,
had I not discovered late in 2018, I probably would not be on my living room
floor right now, writing about these records—his endless repping of friends and
peers via social media has opened up doors
for me, musically, and introduced me to a stable of artists I am so grateful
are now in my life, and in my headphones.
As Under The Shade
concludes, it saves its strongest moments for the end, and it plays what is its
best song, and possibly one of the finest songs of 2019, close to the chest.
“What’s Mine,” the album’s ninth track, begins with a flurry of piano key
tinkles and a stuttering, reserved sounding beat—but it’s the viscerally somber
tone of the song’s melody, and the way guest vocalist duendita’s mournful, soulful
voice floats through it all—that makes it so powerful, all leading up to the
moment when Giles delivers the stunning line to his verse: “I’ve seen a lot in these 21 summers.”
There’s a pause between his age, and the word ‘summers.’ It
is there, primarily, because of the way he needs the words to fit within the
rhythm of the song. But the pause comes as a surprise nevertheless, and it
provides an opportunity to really think about this album—about Giles, about the
face that is found on the album’s artwork, about the idea of knowing just how
poor you are and understanding your struggle, but still having that hope inside
for something more.
“My eyes stay dry
these days, no tears come down—you ain’t seen it/ I really live what I know,”
Giles says, delivered in a fascinating contrast of singing, and then back into
rapping.
“I’m tired of being
tired,” he utters, not dejectedly, but just honestly, near the end of the
song.
Under The Shade closes
with an “Outro,” structured around a chopped up, sorrowful, old soul sample,
providing a ghostly, though somehow comforting backdrop for Giles to say his
final, reflective words—about his struggle, his present and future, and about
the loss he’s seen, specifically of his Uncle Climie, who is mentioned by name,
and is also referenced in the album’s liner notes. “This for anybody who been through what I been through, seen what I’ve
seen. To anybody who has lost somebody. Rest your head in the shade,” Giles
shared on Twitter the day the album was released, then joked when people
listened to the record and asked if he was ‘okay’—he insisted he is happy.
Under The Shade
concludes without any real resolution—leaving a lingering, unsettling feeling.
It’s a meditation on one’s spirituality, and one’s turmoil with the struggle of
the human condition. It’s also a true artistic statement of beauty, and an
incredible accomplishment for an artist that has, so far, only lived through 21
summers.
1- I really do hate to ‘review the review,’ or shit
talk other music writers, but I do want to take a moment to express my
disappointment with the Pitchfork write up of Under The Shade. Published a mere two days after the album’s
release, writer Dean Van Nguyen appears to have spent little, if any time at
all, with the record, and really only details the first three tracks before
reaching a poorly drawn conclusion. I understand that a site like Pitchfork
isn’t going to play ball with a 2,000+ word review, especially written from a
subjective/personal standpoint, but Van Nguyen’s piece is less than 500 words
and it ends with terribly backhanded statements about the album and Giles
himself. This, like so many other things on Pitchfork, is just bad and lazy music
writing at its worst.
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