ALLBLACK & Offset Jim - 22nd Ways [2019]

The Bay is one of the long-standing homes of hip-hop, and is decidedly one of the more unique and self-contained. For two decades they bred rappers whose shine didn’t extend far outside of coast, and whose styles many outsiders would be reluctant to accept. Godfathers like Keak Da Sneak and E-40 are still today major influencers in the Bay, spawning a movement that continues to evolve to this day. Hyphy, a movement Bay residents are all too familiar with, was mostly a local one until a man named DJ Mustard came along, upending the relative seclusion that the sub-genre had enjoyed until then. In the 8 or so years since Mustard made his mark, the mainstream sound of the West-Coast has shifted towards his trademark sound: imagine the demo settings for a Yamaha keyboard with the claps, vocal “aye”s, snares, and sharp synths. It’s not copying this sound, but adapting it to the sounds of the east, Trap, that leads us to the Bay of today. The sound is more cutthroat and brutal, with a darker sound that reminds a lot of the drill movement of Chicago. This darkness is undercut by the rap flows, for which this region has always been known as a pioneer. Everything seems to be coming together now, all of the influences lining up and the new wave established, and the best offering that the Bay has given us in many years has materialized with ALLBLACK and Offset Jim, who come together on their collaborative project 22nd Ways to make a *concrete* statement on where they are going to take their city and who they are taking with them.

G-Eazy has always been good about using his fame to promote the dudes on the street. Also my man ALLBLACK looks like his AI just locked up

I’ll be 100%: I thought ALLBLACK was complete trash when I first heard this dude. His flow reminded me of E-40, but he was just *too* offbeat for me to even consider and, much to my shame, I wrote him off as garbage. He had tracks with YG, G-Eazy, and even E-40 himself that I never paid any attention to. Offset Jim was completely unknown to me before 22nd Ways, so everything experienced was completely new to me. I’ve thought about it a lot, ways that I can describe these two emcees to get people to listen to them, and this is the best that I can come up with: Blueface. I already know how people would react to that (and maybe ALLBLACK and Jim wouldn’t take kindly to it either), but bear with me here. First of all, imagine if Blueface was a good rapper, it’s hard but I need you to try. These two rappers are like the two different parts of Blueface’s rapping style split into two people: Offset Jim is the cold-blooded vocal quality, whose voice resembles the chiseled gang member that BF often strives for, and ALLBLACK (all caps, one word) is the vocal delivery, cramming syllables and words into whatever bar structure he decides to rap to. Of course, these two are leagues ahead in these two respective departments than Blueface will ever be, but for the point of visualization this comparison is the best I can come up with. ALLBLACK and Offset Jim are the perfect representatives for the Bay area right now, with ALLBLACK’s unmistakable loose flow and humor and Jim’s bloody over-the-top drug dealer persona, bringing together everything stylistically unique about this region, both Oakland and Vallejo, into an easily consumable package.

Damn shame about Lul G…

The beats are slappers, through and through, wasting none of the 31 minutes on sappy love tunes, R&B ballads, or autotuned softness. This is the sound on Oakland streets right now, and they want you to know that they aren’t riding a wave; they *are* the wave. The fat synths, the prominent sub-bass, the claps/slaps, and the ever-present usage of the piano as the main instrument reign supreme in the Bay, and 22nd Ways doesn’t ever stray from this winning formula. Sure, they may switch up a little to fit a certain feel: Fees is undoubtedly a strip club banger with it’s quick drums and hilarious hook/lyrics, and some darker streetlight cuts in PRA and Outro injecting a slight amount of G-Funk and reflectiveness to ride the album out. In These Streets is a classic Vallejo sound, quick and nocturnal with short bursts of synth, the perfect pace for the two to murder their verses. But the bread and butter of the album are the bangers, and they bring those tracks in spades. Demon is a blown out, window-rattling speaker-destroyer with enormous warped bass notes, reminding me of the track Death Row from Freddie Gibbs. Dubs in the House is probably the most true-to-form hyphy cut on the record, with bass and synth steadily walloping you, and the DJ’ed female hook gives it that block party feel that is crucial to the genre. But Trip On It, ladies and gentleman, in one of the top bangers of 2019; it’s an LA/Oakland/Vallejo crossover both in features and sound, with the sinister piano notes mixing with the synth-bass and slaps of the bay. The verses on this shit are *killer*, with ALLBLACK and Jim representing their hood in top form, $tupid Young coming through for the South Central Asians with a cutthroat verse and crazy flow, Fenix from Shoreline Mafia running the backend by channeling that Oakland flow, and DaBoii of SOB x RBE absolutely demolishing his verse with unrelenting and over-the-top energetic flow; arguably one of the best featured sixteens I’ve heard this year.

The Bay needs more stars; SOB x RBE flopped in the mainstream & Nef Tha Pharaoh isn’t quite marketable (we won’t count G-Eazy because he’s so far removed from the “sound”). I think ALLBLACK and Offset Jim can come through and fill this gap, for 22nd Ways shows the laser focus these two have, bringing the slaps off the streets of Oakland into your ears. No bullshit, no auto-crooning; these dudes are the real deal. But beyond that, they represent the multi-faceted Bay Area perfectly, showing the general instrumental spread and the flows that have come to identify the region.