Weekly Fix #46 ('21)
Welcome to the Weekly Fix, where I go over everything that I’ve listened to that has come out within the past week. I’ll give a little blurb about the project/single with my feelings on it thrown in there, throw some descriptors and other artists names to give you an idea what the project/single is like, and link to all applicable streaming services where you can find the music. The next section will be devoted to projects that have Bandcamp or online webstore links, to give a greater highlight to those artists who you can support directly. The final section will be for projects that have had a Hot Deal-type release, but have recently come to streaming. Click here to see a list of previous Fixes.
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Finding the time to do things can be a challenge. Managing a full time job, all of this here on Tha Soup Dude’s Kitchen, maintaining relationships, keeping up with friends, taking care of yourself, and being able to do some fun shit on the side can be a logistical clusterfuck. However, sometimes events come along that remind you that that hustle, that grind, that sacrifice, is completely worth it. Sometimes you get a message from someone that you really fuck with saying how much they appreciate the things that you do, and you’re inspired to go even harder. Sometimes it’s meeting someone who has that spark, who goes hard in their own way, which, again, leads to some inspiration of your own.
But days like Wednesday we’re reminded that, by not going hard and doing everything you can to make the most of this life, you’re running a substantial risk. Because one day this shit could all be over. “One day you’re here, and then you’re gone”.
Tragedy strikes the heroes in this genre more often than any other; why that is and what we can do to stop it are subjects of deep discussion, but the fact remains that it’s dangerous to be famous in hip-hop. Give these people the flowers they deserve while they are here on Earth with us.
The man was supposed to give out Thanksgiving turkeys to the Memphis community today, something he’d been doing for years. The man was out buying cookies for his mother.
Rest in peace to Young Dolph.
==> LINK TO THA SOUPCORD <==
Here’s a link to the Week #46 (’21) Playlists
&
Here’s a link to the Week #46 (‘21) Singles
-----STREAMING PROJECTS-----
Silk Sonic – An Evening With Silk Sonic
Cover Artist: Florent Déchard & John Esparza
As someone who has been following Anderson .Paak since the beginning, I think a record like this has been in his future for a long, long time. This is some smooth shit right here, undoubtedly one of the most faithful soul-revival projects that has come out in recent memory, a genius that manifests itself in every single aspect of the project musically. Let’s start with the vocal talents: .Paak has been making music *like* this for years now, but has always maintained a level of modernity that keeps his material relatable to younger audiences, while Bruno Mars has kept funk and power-singing on the minds of pop culture for a long time. These guys taking away those concessions they’ve been making for the sake of modern music and just going right down to the source material gives this album an authentic feel, students of a genre who can do more than just parrot Curtis Mayfield. They are writing and arranging songs in ways that feel like it’s ripped straight from the 70’s; maybe in some instances it borders on caricature (I mean they do have Boosty Collins narrating this thing), but whenever they are really trying to deliver the authenticity they do not fail. Leave The Door Open and Smokin Out the Window have got that Marvin Gaye energy to them, I could see Put On A Smile as a lost Smokey Robinson track, and 777 is deadass a Parliament song sent forward in a time machine. Anderson .Paak as a singer, rapper, and instrumentalist, is literally built from the ground up to accommodate these sounds; he was born to play the role he does in An Evening With Silk Sonic. Bruno Mars, on the other hand, I probably wouldn’t have guessed to be as good of a fit as he ends up being; while leaving a lot of the heavy lifting to Anderson when it comes to verses, Mars’ hooks and bridges on here feel like a vocal powerhouse of a backup to .Paak’s more grainy emotion. There are only 7 tracks, but what we’ve been presented is as air-tight as air-tight can be, with absolutely no dead air and no track that I consider to be out of place. This is definitely one of the year’s best projects, one of those rare releases where the only complaint I have is that it’s not longer. Give this a listen if you just like good music in general.
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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DaBoii – House Arrest
Cover Artist: [Unknown]
Let me tell y’all something: when DaBoii said “the beat be running from your favorite rapper / I control the beat”, I knew this dude was going to be one of my favorites. The confidence in his lyrics, flows, and beat selection make DaBoii a rapper that has a level of skill and awareness that a lot of these younger dudes (especially in the mainstream game) just don’t have yet, and it means that each of his projects feel effortlessly fire. This man is like Eazy-E’s humor and E-40’s flow coming together in one person, rapping a little faster and more frantic than those emcees ever did; most tracks here like Gangsta Shit, Keep My Strap, and Detroit Flow are quick punchlines and hilarious jokes one after the other, not so much “intelligent” or “wordy” as much as it is incredibly entertaining. Some of the shit he says can be dumb as hell, but the vigor and stank he puts on his words has everything coming out much harder than reading it on paper. As one of the Bay’s best (Vallejo, not Oakland), his style is drenched in the history of that scene, and records like House Arrest do so much in bridging that gap between the sounds of Northern California, Los Angeles, more modern mainstream sensibilities from Atlanta, and even some of the most cutting edge music from Detroit right now. Since I’ve been gone, I found out that he released a collaborative album with fellow SOBxRBE member Slimmy B a few months ago, a record I haven’t gotten around to listening to yet but color me excited regardless if the quality of this project is any indication. As for the future of DaBoii, I can only see him getting better; more recognition, more bangin’ beats, more unpredictable flows, and more hilarious bars.
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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Wais P – T.A.P.A.S. 2 (To All Playas & Simps)
Cover Artist: O’Neil.GD
There’s the pimp shit you get from guys like Freddie Gibbs, hard-nosed drug gangsters who’ll kill you as soon as look at you. Then there’s guys like Big Boi who still have their hands in street shit, but they’re really out there on these corners keeping that pimpin’ business running. Then there are the real-ass motherfucking pimps of the game, the Big Daddy Kanes, Pimp Cs, and, of course, Wais Ps, who are out rocking the full ensemble: the rings, necklaces, big-ass fur coats, jeweled canes, the hat with the feather in it. Wais P is one of the only emcees of the modern day who reps so hard for this lost cultural fashion, at least as hard as he does in his raps across a project like T.A.P.A.S. 2, and with that I think, despite still using a similar lyrical bedrocks from New York, he can carve out his own niche in the market right now. He has a large and boisterous persona on the microphone, but for all the talk about killing a dude and getting into fistfights you still get a nugget of friendliness and playfulness underneath everything (something that would probably be useful in a pimp’s profession after all), so you feel like you’re getting an authentically older New York experience, especially when you listen to the great suite of beats you find on this one. Nicholas Craven, Harry Fraud, and some incredible Statik Selektah beats (that shit on Clubber Lang is some fucking Black Dynamite shit and I LOVE it) really give you that swing you’re gonna need to throw you back to those early New York times, great canvases for Wais to really talk that shit. Another great thing about Wais’ projects are his connections he makes on them: you get a lot of lyrical heavy hitters on here, from Termanology to KXNG Crooked, Rass Kass to Ransom (who comes with a verse that sounds at least a decade old, if not more; I didn’t even recognize him on first listen), and even comes with some welcome surprises like Tek and Paul Wall. If you’re wanting fun, cinematic boom-bap music, you really can’t go wrong with a project like this one.
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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UFO Fev – Prayer, Weed & Music
Cover Artist: Drew | Hill
This is the kind of stuff RZA and GZA was talking about when they told the world to “diversify your bonds”, but I realize that I say this while not having the entire picture here. I’ve missed out on Fev’s 2021 so far, a year where he’s dropped a total of 4 projects, so while I can say that, to my ears, UFO is leaning into more processed and accessible sounds, he may very well have done the same things on his previous albums too. My last experience with him was on the powerhouse of a project he did with Big Ghost last year, an album called The Ghost of Albizu (which placed at my #8 Album of 2020 by the way, check that shit out), so going from that project to Prayer, Weed and Music I’m seeing what I can describe as the difference between an album and mixtape; the music here is lower stakes music, talking more about the relationships he has with the things that make him happy rather than dives into his cultural identity. When it comes to rapping, I like to show UFO Fev to people who have difficulty understanding the more cryptic artists in the underground, because the man calmly and succinctly raps his experiences in life in ways that is meant to be heard by everyone, relatable and universal truths of life that even the layman in hip-hop can catch on to. Where the man really shines when it comes to his pen is his bar structures and rhyme schemes: being able to loop back around to different rhyme schemes and tying up bars so nicely are large reason why this dude is one of my favorites and he’s doing that kind of shit everywhere on this project. All of that being said, it’s the beat selection here where the major departures come, giving us some instrumentals with light trap elements, neon synths, and even some melodic tangents, which kept me attentive throughout my listens trying to see what kind of sound he’ll tackle next. While I could have done with some more feature action on here, I’m glad that we got something from Fev that doesn’t feel as serious, a sort of entertaining break from the culturally significant project I last heard from him. Any fan of heartfelt New York lyrical emcees will find a home with UFO Fev, so give this album a shot.
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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DaBaby – Back On My Baby Jesus Sh!t AGAIN
Cover Artist: [Unknown]
So, while I’ve been gone for a minute now, I still kept up with a lot of the hip-hop shenanigans happening out there in the world, and you can be damn sure I heard about all of the fuckery DaBaby got into earlier this year. It really seemed to throw off any sort of momentum that had built up over 2020, putting the brakes on any sort of big project he had cooking for 2021. It’s been a year since we saw the last DaBaby project, My Brother’s Keeper, a project that I fucked with for it’s slightly more nuanced look at DaBaby’s personal life, more successful melodic cuts, and, of course, his trademark aggressive and technical flows. This newest EP, at only 12 minutes and some change, is not even close to that level of introspection and innovation, but it does enough with it’s very short tracks to keep me fed in place of a proper release. Back On My Baby Jesus Sh!t AGAIN is the sequel to Back On My Baby Jesus, a mixtape he dropped back whenever he was calling himself Baby Jesus, but really the only difference between then and now are the features that he can bring in and the caliber of production he’s utilizing, with the rapping styles being virtually identical; you can say a lot of things about DaBaby, but you can’t say the dude isn’t at least consistent with what he does correct. I love the weird beats he uses on here, cute and mysterious trap beats with wild pockets that DaBaby can go crazy over. That’s really about it y’all: not much meat on these bones, most of the tracks being less than 2 minutes, but at least’s you’re getting quality. Let’s hope 2022 treats him better, and he can actually get a substantial album off.
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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-------SOUP’S HOT DEALS-------
Ty Farris – No Cosign Just Cocaine 4
Investment: $20.00
Cover Artist: Artmorfate
Ty Farris is one of the deadliest, no-frills, and laser-focused emcees out there right now, a substantial lyrical force in the D who can truly hang with the fabled heavy-hitters of that town. The man has everything: a scrappy and violent vocal tone, a bombastic flow of dogged threats, lyrical punchlines, turns of phrase that have you running tracks back constantly to hear this crazy shit he comes up with on damn near every bar. He can hold his own on a solo track, attacking a beat relentlessly and coming up with hooks on the fly, but he also has the ability to rope in some amazing performances from features: guys like UFO Fev, Mickey Diamods, Bub Rock, and Substance810 all show up and give what sounds like some of the best shit in their rap notebooks, but the congratulations needs to be given to Ty Farris for getting that ELZHI feature on this mothefucker, cause I know that has to feel amazing. So, on the bars side of the project, we’re getting that mission statement of Bars Over BS coming through loud and clear, but I’m even more impressed how these beats manage to go toe-to-toe with some of these amazing performances. The producer credits on this bitch are nuts, bringing in beats from Spanish Ran, Nicholas Craven, Black Milk, Finn, Vanderslice, Apollo Brown and Big Ghost, among many others. At 14 tracks, if you’re looking for an album that’s pure hardcore hip-hop with some of the best bars and beats you can find, you can rest assured that No Cosign Just Cocaine 4 will fulfil all of those needs for you. Do me a favor: go to Bandcamp and support this dude. Big ups to Ty Farris for this incredible project.
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Aesop Rock & Blockhead – Garbology
Investment: $10.00
Cover Artist: elcoro36
I mean, what more needs to be said about these men right here? Whenever people say shit like “name a more iconic duo”, you’d be hard pressed to find another duo more ubiquitous in this underground shit than Aes and Block, as these guys have done multiple projects together over the decades (their first LP was *over* twenty years ago… god damn son) and have sort of come up together as figureheads of weird and experimental hip-hop. However, as the years have gone on, Aesop Rock has been looking to branch out more in his production partners, spending the 2010’s mostly rapping over his own beats, occasionally striking out over someone else’s beats like 2019’s Malibu Ken with TOBACCO. Deciding after all this time to return to his roots with Blockhead feels satisfying, but it will be a reunion that will still feel like both artists are attempting to push forward into the future, still taking on new ideas to prevent becoming stagnant. Blockhead in particular seems to be experimenting more with different ranges of BPM’s, turning it up and down on different tracks to create challenges for Aesop to overcome (the track Wolf Piss in particular feels like a speed of rapping I haven’t heard Aesop commit to in a long time), and the emcee takes each one of these curveballs in stride, never once missing step across the solid 50 minutes. Now, when it comes to the actual lyrical substance, you’re gonna get exactly what you expect from Aesop Rock: huge, weird words, dense and heady sentences that don’t necessarily take scholars to decipher like a Mach-Hommy verse would, but take careful listening to really appreciate the thoughtfulness of his bars. He’s not just spewing random words (although it may sound like it at times) as many of these tracks actually have focused themes and stories, with the word-choices he makes really just making the tales more vivid and colorful without feeling forced. I would have liked to have seem some more features on here (I feel like Your Old Droog should have been a given on one of these), as I fuck with Homeboy Sandman’s appearance on here heavy, another in a long line of crossovers between these two. If you want some weird left-field hip-hop, this is a project you don’t want to miss.
Cover Artist: Jean Goode, Photo Rob, & Austin Hart
It’s difficult to write about an album like only a week after it came out: unlike Aesop up above, while he is generally easy to follow if you pay attention to him closely enough, I often lose my place in a Joell Ortiz track because he will say something so crazily fire that I either have to rewind the track or wait until the album loops back so I can hear it again. This man is really a psychopathic thinker in the truest sense, wordplay that is rivaled by a very select few emcees in the game right now, but is a unique figure in that he uses this immense gift to tell personal stories of his own life more often than not. The album is called “Autograph”, self-written if you will, so most of what you’re gonna hear on this project are stories of his childhood (there’s a particularly funny opening track of him talking about literally being born), his escapades as a young adult, his time in the system of record labels and mainstream success, and how he has adapted to this latest chapter of his life making money as more of an underground gem. It’s all very confessional and heartfelt, like he’s really letting you in on the details of his otherwise private life, a level of vulnerability through music that is rare in this genre. But for all of that talk, you are still getting a wild emcee who shouts a lot of his bars, asserts his gangster whenever he needs to with bloodthirst, and treats every single verse like he has something to prove to the world. There isn’t much more to say about it than that: the bars are on point, the flows are on point, the aggressive nature is blistering, and the features on tailor made for an emcee of Joell’s skill-level (CyHi the Prince, KXNG Crooked, and Sheek Louch). Listen to this shit if you want some topically focused material from one of hip-hop’s most creative pens.
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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NCL-DøøFus – NCL-DøøFus 2 : SWAMP PHONK
Investment: $10.00
Cover Artist: Ivan Merlin
Last year we got a project from this duo here, the Virginia rapper DøøF and London producer NCL-TM, who gave us the original NCL-DøøFus, a project that I loved the concept and execution of, but that I wished was maybe a bit more fleshed out and longer. Well, I’m pleased to report that the sequel to that tape is better than the original in ever single way, and fascinating listen filled to the brim with ill lyrics and completely nutso samples. I want to start with DøøF, a rapper who I can really only describe as unorthodox. His voice has this nasal whine to it, sounding like someone trying on purpose to sound like the grimiest character they can come up with, which lends a lot of the random tangential bars some sort of humorous purpose beyond just sounding cool in the moment. He has a sense of flow and cadence, but often these beats are so off-kilter that these skills almost need to be rewritten on the fly to accommodate. NCL, who only very rarely does full collaborations with rappers, really pulls out all of the stops for the instrumentals on this one: I would compare it to someone like Madlib, but that doesn’t even come close to conveying to y’all how weird these beats can get. NCL is unique in the ways he juxtaposes these jazz grooves and band samples, which can be smooth as butter when isolated, in front of a melting chaos, a collage of drums, ticks, sound effects, and other disparate samples to create something challenging on every single track. If Picasso made hip-hop beats, I promise you his shit would sound exactly like this, because only he could take all of these elements an blend them together in a way that is both listenable to rappable, and big ups need to be given to DøøF for even attempting, let alone excelling, over these beats. If you want some hip-hop that really blindsides you with total absurdity and jazz samples, like some sort of lost and corrupted Tribe Called Quest album, I can’t recommend this highly enough.
Cover Artist: Gregory Simmons II
I love this style of hip-hop, cloudy and heady raps that can be overwhelmingly personal, spit in ways that can range from monotone to tempered excitement. In that way, Medhane (also, how do you pronounce this shit? I’m a Tolkien disciple, so I’m saying “Methane”, but I’m pretty sure it’s not said like that) is a lot like some of his contemporaries, guys like MIKE, Navy Blue, and Maxo, slower and more thoughtful in their deliveries. Subject matter wise, you’re venturing more into a more of a poetic realm of hip-hop; you’re rarely ever getting directly “I feel like this” from guys like Medhane, but rather indirect references to situations and events in their life, as well as some cryptic references and wordplay, to convey how they are really feeling deep down inside. You can listen closely, but most of the time you’re gonna have to sit with the lyrics for a minute to kind of digest what is really being said to you, because little of it is surface level. As much as I love this style of approach, it is rather dry, which is why that the beats are so crucial to this subgenre: he enlists names like Chuck Strangers, Animoss, Nicholas Craven, as well as crafting many of these beats on his own, and the results are an amazing example of how bold use of samples can turn a good album into an incredible one. There are so many highlights on this project, from the high-class strings on Craven’s no sugar, JUNIE’s crunchy drums and abrasive vocal sample on don’t forget about me, and, the star of the show in my opinion, Animoss’ ripped my ksubis, one of the most soulful beats I’ve heard in 2021. Medhane’s honed introspection waxed over these refined and beautiful pieces of sampling gold make this an album that I won’t be quick to forget. Give this a shot if you fuck with guys like Boldy James and Earl Sweatshirt.
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-----NEW TO STREAMING-----
Lord Juco & Finn – Details
Cover Artist: Art Fuentes aka ARF
Read About It Here: Weekly Fix #45 (‘21)
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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Nomad Carlos – Element of Suprize
Cover Artist: DavidEnco
