Rapid Fire Reviews: Word-Bending Hip Hop with Open Mike Eagle, Westside Gunn & R.A.P Ferreira
Component System With The Auto Reverse - Open Mike Eagle
10 - Westside Gunn
I've been a fan of Mike for a long time, since his verbose art raps on Dark Comedy wowed me with their creativity and bouncy pop culture references. While I thought his previous album Anime, Trauma and Divorce was just okay I still came into this record expecting the same level of greatness that I do for pretty much every new OME project that drops. The first thing you'll notice about this record is that it's pretty chaotically organized with 14 tracks that vary quite a bit in length and add up to less than 40 minutes of total runtime. The record also features several collaborators, particularly across the second half, giving it more of a spur-of-the-moment mixtape style flow than a conventional album. Despite that when more fleshed-out tracks emerge they can occasionally be great. Early on in the record 79th and Stony Island and I'll Fight You come back to back as big highlights full of the kind of niche references and impressive wordplay that has always defined the best OME songs. Other highlights include Burner Account which starts like many a tongue-in-cheek Mike rap song has before which had me very curious about how Armand Hammer would fit in but the song makes a bit of a darker shift in the second half that's perfect for them. I also think For DOOM is a great tribute to one of Mike's biggest influences with an achingly authentic series of bars about his interactions with DOOM and his influence on Mike's work, plus it has a really simple but great instrumental. Finally, while we're definitely going to talk more about R.A.P Ferreira later on I want to say that his opening verse on Multi-Game Arcade Cabinet might be the best on the entire record. In contrast, there are certainly some inconsistencies on the record. Like any rap album that's full of features, the quality of performance varies widely. I also find some of the shorter tracks to be much less compelling and for as charming as Peak Lockdown Raps is at first, I can't help but wish I could just hear Mike's vocals on the song better. Component System isn't perfect but I like it more than Mike's previous record. I think it does a better job of showing off his talent not only as a rapper himself but also as a great curator of talent. If you've liked anything Mike has done in the past and were thinking about skipping this record, don't, because the highlights alone are worth giving it an honest shot. 7/10
As much as I wish I could review every single record that I hear in a calendar year, there are only so many hours in the day. That means that for the prolific Griselda crew I'll cover what I can but I think keeping up with absolutely everything they do is impossible and there will definitely be projects I don't get to talk about this year (looking at you Boldy James). But 10 felt like a pretty big and important undertaking for Westside Gunn and I wanted to make sure I covered it. It's the finale to his Hitler Wears Hermes series of mixtapes and he really brought out the stops as this record is packed full of guests. While these tapes have never been my favorite WSG projects they're no doubt an important part of his discography and I was hoping that he would send the series out on top with this finale. As you'd expect there is a LOT of time on this record with artists spent flexing Gunn's accomplishments and Griselda's influence. Between the intro track and the intro to the second song you're a good 5 minutes into the record before you even hear his voice for the first time, and it's actually one of the record's weaker songs. Obviously, when the featured artists are bringing their A-Game it can absolutely make some of these songs, A$AP Rocky on Shootouts In Soho and Black Star on Peppas are two great examples early on the record. The best example is Science Class which features Busta Rhymes, Stove God Cooks, and a number of Wu-Tang alum, and collectively they absolutely crush the track. Unfortunately, as you'd expect the quality of performances here varies pretty drastically throughout. While there aren't very many songs that are ruined by bad or boring features the parade of anonymous deep-voiced guys macho posturing consecutively sometimes sounds like what I would imagine a mixtape made by Gears Of War characters would be. Fittingly, the record ends with a huge 10-minute posse cut that makes up more than a fifth of the record just on its own. While it may not be Oldie or 1train I think it's a pretty solid posse cut. The weird beat does a lot for me and heightens some of the performances, plus finally hearing a girl spit some bars on this record is pretty refreshing too. This mixtape is pretty rough around the edges and calling it inconsistent would be an understatement but it has a lot of aesthetic charm that makes up for some of that stuff. It really does feel like a victory lap for Westside Gunn and for this entire series. So despite the fact that I don't think Gunn himself is bringing his best work across the project, I think it does a solid job of proving why we've been paying attention to the series for all these years. 6.5/10
5 to the Eye with Stars - R.A.P Ferreira
While R.A.P Ferreira isn't always perfect, as I learned when I critiqued Bob's Son last year which Rory wasn't a fan of on Twitter when he's in his bag he can make some absolutely great music. His second album of 2021 the Light Emitting Diamond Cutter Scriptures was great and reminded me of some of the best work he's ever made. That's why I was pretty excited going into this record but even then I'm not sure I was ready for how good this is. It's a very short project with 9 songs running under 25 minutes but there really isn't much time wasted at all in the process. The opener is an insanely slick jazzy track that equates "writing raps" to "fighting back" with two minutes of nonstop impressive bars t start the record off. It's immediately followed by Ours a single I haven't been able to stop listening to since it first came out which features a number of memorable lyrics and a somehow even more memorable hook. On consolation Rory does some of his own singing and with the array of keys in the background of the song it really feels like the closest he gets on the record to pure poetry, which makes sense as it's listed as being inspired by a specific poem. On the record's lead single mythsysizer instict he lets Hemlock Ernst, the rap pseudonym of Future Islands singer Sam Herring take over on the hook. I wasn't crazy about the song as a single and while I do like it a little more here, especially the Hemlock Ernst refrain, I do think it's just okay compared to the other songs here. On the other hand, we have kind of a banger in sittlichket which has a pretty irresistible combo of drums and keys that is just purely cosmic. It also has a great hook punctuating in the line "I don't like people, all my problems is man-made." The record also ends on a pair of more reserved songs that feel like an appropriate exhale. While they may not blow me away individually I think they serve a good purpose at bringing the record to its conclusion and the closing track boot knife in particular features some great lines. One of the only songs I'm not crazy about is ark doors which is a shame because the closing sequence of references connecting the song to Arrested Development's classic Tennessee is great. Unfortunately, the chaotic sound of the track is a lot more distracting than I would like and I'm not sure it suits the song. I like this record quite a bit and complaints that I would normally have about other albums like the brevity of its runtime and the often quite messy mixing are actually positives in Rory's hands. The album knows exactly how to use them as features to achieve its goals and the result is a really enjoyable listening experience. While I don't think it will quite upset some of the pillars of Rory's career thus far, it's a short but very very sweet listen that any conscious hip-hop fans should thoroughly enjoy. 8/10
