Triller: It Is What It Is

Z-Ro and Trae’s It Is What It Is contains none of the signifiers – marquee collaborations, cross-overs, shouted intros by popular DJs - that we come to expect from modern rap albums of a certain stature. Save one Nitti beat, the album’s producers would be tough to place for those who don’t obsess over Mr. Lee’s drum sounds. Imagine watching Monday Night Football next week without Joe Theisman, Suzy Kolber, the intro clips, the crowd noise, the dozens of camera angles, the replays, and the in-game graphics. You’d see a purer, though potentially less enthralling spectacle that depended on a match-up strong enough to carry you along without ESPN’s glossy signposts.

Here recording as ABN (Assholes By Nature), Houston’s Z-Ro and Trae have always been outlaws of sorts, even while occasionally finding success within the rap mainstream. They each epitomize the type of rapper that can thrive outside of the aforementioned trappings of today’s rap sound. Both are hyper-rhythmic and -lyrical but balanced and ever striving to achieve a tangible atmosphere in their verses, whether in concert with the beat or despite it.

The album “announces” itself with a method that has never been entirely en vogue in rap, despite giving shelf-life to countless undeserving rock outfits for years: make your first song your loudest. Forceful, stormy, anchored by a few stabs of a distorted guitar and a lilting keyboard riff seemingly ripped from a slasher flick, “Umm Umm” (pronounced “uhhhhhHUHHHH”) is not only devoid of the usual contrivances, but also chorus-less. While the beat remains static, Trae and Z-Ro dance around it in double-time, dressing up their flows with syncopation and well-timed beats of silence.

Few other tracks on It Is What It Is are as determined, symphonic, and unique as “Umm Umm,” nor should they be, as that would make for an overpowering, claustrophobic listen. But as a whole, the album plays off the concentrated mode of the opener. Aside from Z-Ro’s choruses, there are few interruptions between verses, and both rappers rise to the occasion of this lyrics-first style of by-gone eras. Trae, as his fans know, is always on – he audibly exerts himself on every verse, pulling out every stop, at times to a fault. Even on “No Help,” a down-tempo, murky piece on which he his featured, Trae maintains his highly enunciated, guttural flow and often falls back into double-time.

Fortunately, on “No Help” and most songs in this set, Trae’s complex rapping never reaches overkill because Z-Ro proves such an ideal foil (and vice versa). While attacking in a similar manner (Z-Ro does his entire second verse on “No Help” in double-time), Z-Ro’s flow is ever elegant and organic. He talks to listeners like few rappers in recent memory. His rhyming seems coincidental – while it’s popular and traditional for rappers to build up their rhymes like punchlines, Z-Ro often floats through the last syllables of each bar. The effect is amplified by Z-Ro’s pedigree as a top-rate hook crooner; he seems primarily concerned with how his verse functions rhythmically and melodically.

While I take more to Z-Ro’s verses on this set (due in no small part to Trae’s prolific solo output in 2008), It Is What It Is thrives on the interplay between their contrasting styles. The album’s realist outlook is strong and, in their hands, highly compelling. But you only really get into lyrical themes after five or six listens. Before that, it’s easy, as the listener, to just get caught up in the joy they had in putting together this set. Z-Ro and Trae knew they were good enough to make a rap album based on little but lyrics, and they did. It’s a cocky move, for sure, but when has great rap been anything but?

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