2011 In Hip Hop

[Note: This post is by contributor Luke Winkie.]

Okay, look - you weren’t the only reader who found our staff album’s list a little pallid. Some great records, some thoughtful write-ups, but a distinct lack of sounds outside the usual indie flavors - which is fine, it’s just our collective tastes. But being the person the Austinist sends to review Das Racist shows, here’s my offering of some 2011 hip-hop that deserves at least a tip of the hat. No particular order besides the momentum the records cross my mind. All respect to Shabazz Palaces, Death Grips, Jay-Z & Kanye West, and A$AP Rocky amongst plenty others who released great albums last year, but there was only so much I could write about.

Action Bronson - Dr. Lecter

Action Bronson is a chef in the daytime. He’s actually on record saying that his burgeoning music career is more or less a fundraising bedrock towards culinary lessons in Tuscany. The lovable irreverence of a back-story like that feeds the underlying charm of Dr. Lecter. Essentially a forty-minute barrage of retro breaks and inflated shit-talk, there isn’t a moment where Bronson comes even close to taking himself seriously. On “Ronnie Coleman,” both an ode to comfort food and a self-directed rip at his own bodyweight, he starts obsessively shouting “MARSHMALLOWS! MARSHMALLOWS!” after giving up on a half-hearted workout. “An hour later eat the burger with my drug dealer /then add the butter to the fudge to make the fudge realer!” He raps about food with such ferocity, and such categorical precision, it actually rubs off.

But best of all, it’s just a hard-nosed New York hip-hop album that retains the light, yucks-and-all spirit that’s been missing lately. Bronson is obviously smitten with the golden age enough to emulate it, and that’s the finest form of flattery. It’s the kind of record for traditionalists, those left out in the cold by blog-topics like the neo-crunk of Flocka or the minimal rawness of SPACEGHOSTPURP - soul-samples, weed-jokes and decayed sports references, but it never, ever panders. That’s probably the most impressive thing.

Action Bronson: [facebook]

Waka Flocka Flame - Lebron Flocka James 3

Clarifying the brainlessness of Flocka’s insanity is pretty much a meaningless task at this point - his cultural ubiquity and profitable memeness is hard to explain, outside of the star-making abilities of fellow ATLien Gucci Mane. The music he makes seems impossible to market - loud, gristly, and irrevocably grim tales of primitive ghetto chaos, filtered through skull-thumping synthetic assaults. He and combustible producer Lex Luger are both mutually responsible for each other’s success.

Lugers isn’t behind every track on Lebron Flocka James 3, but as plenty of missteps have shown, Flocka’s assault needs a severe dosage of volatile synth-driven madness. Every beat-maker basically does his best Luger impression, a scarily intense mess of loud, blatant baggage. Waka is even more incoherent than usual, shouting catch-phrases so deeply coded in hood-vocabulary, it’s hard to think even people commissioned to write about rap music know what it means. A few of the tracks boil down to a throat-rupturing shout, bypassing any regular sensibilities in favor of unrefined visceral pleasure.

The paragraph above could be easily read as a pan. Flocka has required a unique open mind in his time in the spotlight, and the caveats remain the same. He’s still kind of bad at rapping; there are still too many songs, the words “Tyler Perry” are repeated about three million times on a song called “Tyler Perry.” Insurgent agro-rap, basement neo-crunk, conscious-hop’s cold dark ending - no matter which way you spin it this is physical music, and it’s a lot of stupid fun if you’re able to submit to the body pleasures. Oh, I would make fun of the awful name, but his earlier Duflocka Rant tape is just that much sillier.

Waka Flocka Flame: [official]

Serengeti - Family And Friends

If you’re good enough friends with Yoni Wolf to get him to produce the bulk of the tracks on your LP, it’s pretty easy to place you in the rap world. David Cohn has been kicking around alt-rap long enough to be called a staple, experimenting (or indulging) in everything from gummy garage-rock to askew electronic pulses. There’s none of that on Family And Friends, he’s just telling stories - about love, about memory, about friendship, about a father and son falling into a bottomless pit of addiction, about a borderline pedophile, everything is fair game. Sometimes records like this can be absolutely sickening in their self-appointed egghead elitism, but not with Serengeti - this is a dude who you could picture bumping Lebron Flocka James 3.

His finest moment comes with “The Whip.” A story about opportunity and its pitfalls, Cohn narrates the fictional life of The Whip, a UFC fighter who was inches close to glory in UFC 3 only to fall a few seconds short of a championship. As time goes on he falls deeper into a quiet life in the American Southwest, the shadow of what could have been constantly hanging over him. There is no concrete moral, no socio-political commentary, Cohn neither looks down at MMA for its fierceness nor looks up at it for its competition - it is merely an exercise in pure storytelling, something a lot of rappers feel they’re above. Sure the beats are wallpaper-thin and you could make a convincing argument that Family And Friends would work better if it was spoken-word, but it’s nice knowing that some people remember the beauty of not trying too hard.

Serengeti: [facebook]

Elzhi - Elmatic

One of the first records I ever reviewed in my career was a tossed-off, near stillborn EP of a couple Black Flag songs covered with a country jaunt. The PR proudly announced the involvement of two minor players in the ever-stretching canon of people who used to be in Black Flag. There really wasn’t a single redeeming value, just pastiche through and through. When news hit that an MC as casually respected as Elzhi was ‘reimagining’ easily the most cherished and referenced hip-hop album of the ‘90s - it was hard to keep a straight face. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose, a move like this is generally reserved for the twilight of careers, or people hungrily grabbing at any sort of attention they can muster. It was not a project that seemed destined to win over the cynics.

So he grabs a live band and a producer in Will Sessions and rerecords all of Illmatic’s tinny, limited-resource beats. “Represent” punches harder, “Memory Lane” reaches deeper, and “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” somehow sounds more eternal. The apex is “One Love,” which straps an extended jazz suite onto a grizzly tale or ghetto romance. His poetry is deep, self-aware in the character flaws it reveals - referencing its parent album only when appropriate. Elzhi knowingly treads sacred ground, but he’s in it for the art, not the headlines. It mutates from a sensationalist thrust to a loving adaptation, by the end it’s a masterfully careful reconfiguration. Elzhi followed his muse into dangerous territory, and returned with something that categorically beats the odds.

Elzhi: [official]

Drake - Take Care

You heard of this one? A half-Jewish Torontonian/former "Degrassi" cast-member who managed to go platinum on his second album ever? Oh and he’s rapping? This is not the most obvious path to relevance, and more proof than anything else that we’re living in an era where hip-hop and gangsta-isms are utterly separate entities.

This is the quietest blockbuster you will ever hear. Sure the singles are patiently waiting, but Take Care is primarily seventy minutes of sedate, internal ruminations. Mostly about girls, fame and girls, and money, there’s that too - the usual tropes. He’s the most malcontent young attractive bachelor ever laid to tape, at one point he mentions mid-apology “I’ve had sex three times this week I can explain /having a hard time adjusting to fame.” He’s enough of a smart guy to understand the knee jerk guffaw the western male population has to a line like that, yet he keeps an unflinching posture. He’s unveiling incredibly personal tales and troubles, all intrinsically impossible to relate to. Strangely enough, that’s the beauty of it all.

The deeper you sink into Take Care the more fascinating Drake becomes. Rarely does the uber-famous alpha-male popstar reveal himself in such complicated ways. Regretting a break up? That’s as old as pop itself, but the deeply wounded sorrow of “Marvins Room” is another story. Does he miss her? Is he drunk enough to think he misses her? Is he just being the self-absorbed asshole she seems to think he is? These are unflattering questions with unclear answers. “Fuck that nigga that you love so bad /I know you still think about the times we had” goes the hook, that’s classic post-breakup cheese we’ve all caught ourselves saying before - most of us regret it in the morning but Drake takes us right to the moment. His ability to bare it all can hurt in beautiful ways, it also doesn’t hurt that he has a producer like 40 to make it all sound so sublime.

Drake: [official]

Danny Brown - XXX

What a strange, wonderful thing XXX is. Thirty-year old Danny Brown has spent the vast majority of his life in Detroit’s squalor, his rap career essentially nonexistent before 2011, thanks to a shout from Das Racist and a few killer features. It’s a slow, hallucinogenic descent into Brown’s psyche, coming in two distinct phases, both uniquely memorable.

He’s got a voice like his mouth is five miles wide; he could voice a Looney Toon in another life. “Ready to hit the studio and shit all on your mixtape /no literally /shit all on your mixtape.” It only escalates in ridiculousness as the running-time goes on - more than any other MC on this list; Danny is provocative without a core. He’s just out to shock, through filthy sex jokes, Urban Dictionary-breaking boasts, or esoteric, comprehensive drug use. “I Will” is a song about loving to give oral sex. That isn’t necessarily a peerless thread in rap, but three verses and not a single reference to wanting something in return - that’s hard to process.

XXX is a drug-fueled, Technicolor nightmare for its vast majority, but then, at the very end, the hubris arrives. Like a siphoning comedown after a reckless bender, his voice is subdued to a human tone, he starts talking about the poverty, familial drama, and unfunny addiction that stifle his being. It makes the previous braindead insanity feel a lot more real - and it’s almost theatric how he twists the arc at the very end. Plenty of people have been rapping about getting fucked up lately, but Brown’s troubling storyline ought to be the blueprint.

Danny Brown: [label page]

Don Trip & Starlito - Stepbrothers

Two mixtape guys, a loose concept based on that surprisingly well-remembered Will Ferrell movie from a couple years back, and arguably the most elementally sound mixtape of the year. It’s actually kind of hard to write about, it excels in fantastically normal ways. Don Trip & Starlito’s bleats sound very good together, they have no issue with the hijacked, radio-bound beats they kill, and there’s no intrusive DJ or blatantly token feature-spot to put a bad taste in our mouths. It’s also full of a lot of really silly punchlines that a guy like me can get behind - “I don’t get as high as I used to /Vince Carter!”

Honestly it’s probably the most optimistic listening experience in rap last year. The ingredients are obvious; the MCs rugged, talented, and still searching for fame, the beats powerful but not anything premium - it’s an encyclopedia-ready example of what a mixtape is supposed to be. In a world where rappers can hardly make enough of a profit to tour and dozens of thinkpieces about how hip-hop has faltered in front of the charts - a couple guys as fun, as irreverent, and as anonymous as Don Trip and Starlito can still rap for someone. Sure the audiences may be diminished, but thank god something like Stepbrothers can still exist.

Don Trip: [official]
Starlito: [bandcamp]