al.divino & Estee Nack - Abrakadabra, Alakazam! [2018]

Welcome to one of my many Write-Ups, where I dive into a contextual history of a project from an artist, while also breaking down the different parts worth mentioning. Come over to my Write-Ups page for a list of all of the work I’ve done so far.

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The older I get and more that the internet exposes me to people with immense talent, the more I think the regionality of hip-hop need to be reevaluated. I’ve written about New York emcees tons of times, and while it is unquestionably the cornerstone of this genre, other states are making their impressions felt in supreme fashion. Massachusetts has stake in the history of hip-hop, although there hasn’t been much of a cohesive nature to its artists until the most recent decade; you all know artists like Guru, MC Esoteric, and all the people Statik Selektah have put on. But there wasn’t a movement, a group of people that were dead set on putting the state on the map until a group called the Tragic Allies came onto the scene at the very beginning of the 2010’s. Purpose, Paranom, Code Nine, and, most importantly to this write-up, Estee Nack, came together to give people a reason why MA was a state worth watching in the boom-bap game. After the beginning of the decade, after endorsements from cats like Wu-Tang affiliate 4th Disciple no less, the Tragic Allies took a more underground approach to their music, and it wasn’t until the middle of the decade when they, specifically Nack, found his niche on the Bandcamp’s and smaller websites of the world. But there was a another player in this saga named al.divino, who had been around the Allies for a long time without mention until he decided to carve out a name for himself in this exploding high-class but low-fi vinyl renaissance. He did one off features for guys like Tha God Fahim and Hus Kingpin, lending production talents and verses while he was kicking his first few mixtapes, but it wasn’t until he linked up with Estee Nack in the last days of 2016 for their first big project, Triple Black Diamonds, that he saw true success in the game. 2017 was quiet for Estee Nack and al.divino, with Nack working and building only releasing with his friends, and divino working on his new relationship with the Dump Gawd and Mach-Hommy. But once 2018 came, they opened the floodgates; album after album, EP after EP made 2018 the year where both men dropped the majority of their discographies. One album in particular that represents the pinnacle of the partnership between Estee and al is Abrakadabra, Alakazam!, which showcases the incredible chemistry between the two artists. But it wasn’t entirely the emcees that brought this album together into a fascinating whole: to find the third instrument to this masterclass in low-fi hip-hop, we gotta go south about 10 hours on the I-95…

Lynn and Richmond are quite the distance away from each other, but the styles that come out of each city are similar enough to complement each other

Graymatter was a rather self-contained producer until he linked up with Estee Nack and al.divino for Abrakadabra, Alakazam!. From Richmond down in Virginia, most of his production was given to local artists, with many singles and whole projects under his belt before 2018 came around. People like Koncept Jack$on, Fly Anakin, Big Kahuna OG, and fellow producer Unlucky Bastards were his usual suspects, all Richmond natives who contributed to making the town a very tight-knit community of golden age rap techniques and modern experimental boom-bap. Now, I love those rappers that I mentioned, but I think the strides that people like Graymatter are taking in furthering the strange, cerebral undertone in underground hip-hop has so much more room for growing and expanding; the real gold comes from finding the right artists to work with that utilize the stylings appropriately.

Estee Nack and al.divino are two rare artists who are almost entirely on the same wavelength in terms of rapping styles, flows, lyrics, etc. I would call them among the sort of “structureless rappers” like MF Doom and CRIMEAPPLE, taking little heed to drum patterns and bar structure to rap in whatever way gets the words out on the airwaves. So, in a way, there is very little flow amongst them, but rather attempts to spit rhythmically, mechanically, and loudly, giving their deliveries a choppy and burst-fire feel. Their detailed rhyme schemes are also something to behold, with the emcees penning dense forests of rhymes. divino is more of the internal rhyme schemes cat, where every other word of whole verses can rhyme with each other, while Estee Nack can come back to a rhyme sentences later and pick up where he left off seamlessly. Although they show the passion differently, their attention paid to these schemes are some of the best in the underground right now, and coupled with their loud flows make them incredibly unique and identifiable. There are a few more differences between the two, however: divino is a much huskier-voiced emcee at times, the crackle and strain in his voice showing he’s giving 100% every time he steps into the booth. Estee Nack reins in his performances, and while it’s still loud and boisterous it never gets as chaotic as al’s voice can get; his Dominican heritage also brings in some added flair to his voice where you can hear his accent coming through clearly. Where the two line up clear as day are on their lyrics which are, to an unsuspecting ear, complete nonsense most of the time. Abstract and obtuse metaphors, various humorous non-sequiturs, unchecked aggression, braggadocio galore, and, in Nack’s case, Spanish turns of phrase. You get some 5% ideology thrown in there from divino, pimp talk from the Nackman, and some of that 90’s gangsta violence to spice up the pot and you get an off-the-cuff and entirely spontaneous lyrical substances that switches at random. Think something like Tha God Fahim, but not quite as “enlightened”, or Mach-Hommy.

al.divino has blown up relatively quickly in the underground scene due to his no-fucks-given attitude and unrelenting aggression

It’s good that these two rappers are so formless in the way they rap, because Graymatter excels at creating very atmospheric and dislocating beats, ones that would be difficult for anyone to approach let alone find a pocket. Sparing drum-kits, a heavy jazz influence, and a smattering of lethargy and mysticism are all pieces to the puzzle that Graymatter has assembled on Abrakadabra, Alakazam! But instead of hitting you over the head and leaving you for dead in the quicksand, he balances the groundless beats with other grounded beats, telling you this this is definitively a boom-bap experience, but with a occultic and hazy twist. It’s a distinct step forward (or downward if you will) towards breaking boom-bap into its most basic elements; it throws you into the deep end of its odd instrumentals and has you simply witness it. It’s never brash or abrasive. It doesn’t “slap”; but rather it’s like a creeping sensation, like a gas that fills the room with a haze of sounds. The first half of the record is a more stable experience: tracks like Tony Camonte Tommy with the debonair horn samples and faint snares looped expertly, and the briskly paced Eureka with it’s collage of jazzy piano notes and dusty dissonant drum hits, are more familiar sounds for underground hip-hop fans, with people who come from The Alchemist or Q-Tip production being right at home here. But Scrooge McDuck, while still being a happy-go-lucky kind of beat, is like a gargled subspace transmission from the planet Jazz; it *sounds* familiar but the more you listen the more it sounds like a beat falling apart at the seams, like a beat that’s waterlogged with sound.

The density of some of these earlier beats on Abrakadabra, Alakazam! will prepare you for the second half, with the opener Mad Riche$ coming heavy with the heaviness and fuzz; it’s a disparate group of bells and whistles, clings and clangs, occasionally bold bass-notes that leap up at you from the back at the mix, but all backed by the rolling drums that ground the beat in reality. Alpine Polo is like a marching tune in dreamland with a lot of those same small instrumental details on Mad Rich$ showing up here, along with subdued laser-like synths and fuzzy drumline. But the real experimental meat of this record will hit you like a wall on Genie Lamp Steam, slowing the BPM way down, taking away most of the percussion besides drumstick hits, and throwing sounds at you like it’s nothing: saxophones, I think there’s a distorted choral sample in there, and this synthetic drone so faint that it almost feels unreal. This is the first track where the drum-structure is totally thrown out the window, where anyone that can find a pocket in this shit is a crazy motherfucker…. but it’s no match for the Nackman and al.divino. Slight of Hand reveals the tension that Graymatter can create with these skeletal beats, with the droning keyboard skipping like a record really putting you on edge; you want it to stop but you can’t stop listening to see where the end is, like a wormhole of a beat. I can’t even begin to fathom what the emcees thought whenever they first heard Vodou Candles, because while most rappers would probably just hear this an ambient jazz piece the Lynn boys saw opportunity. The track is a cacophony of sound with trumpets, birds, completely structureless snares and kicks, a bass “groove”, probably a triangle in there somewhere. From the outside it looks like nonsense, but you hear of all of these layers that are seemingly working against each other, and then you hear the two rapping and you can hear where they’re picking up the flow and it all just sort of clicks. After cheering up the audience a bit with the glitzier Bubblegum Hash, taking a lot of the same cues as Eureka/Tony Camonte Tommy, the album ends with Premonitions of Wealth; while Vodou Candles takes you into Bizzaro-World where nothing makes sense, the closer takes you right up to the gate, with just enough about the track to keep you grounded, but it’s like one of those images where if you keep looking the more absurd it gets. You start noticing that the bass-groove doesn’t quite line up with the hi-hats, the guitar licks are slightly out of time, and just when you think you’ve picked out the loop some other instrument comes in to wreck your train of thought; it all sounds negative, but it comes together into something fascinating to listen to, and even more compelling to listen to Este Nack and divino try and rap over it.

Sadhugold is another producer y’all NEED to keep your eyes on. His sampling techniques are incredible, and the tape he put out with Estee Nack in 2018 (which came out literally a week before Abrakadabra, Alakazam!) is one of his best

Abrakadabra, Alakazam! shows that the entirely unique experimentation with bar-structure and flow coming from Lynn, MA is the forefront of a wider wave in the genre. Estee Nack and al.divino are on the top of the pile of disregard for the conventions and norms, creating sounds, together with Graymatter, that you truly haven’t heard before. Since this project dropped, the Nackman and divino have collaborated probably a dozen more times, some endeavors that stick to the boom-bap template more squarely and others that go even farther into the disjointed and experimental pit; they remain very close collaborators, and I don’t see that changing much going into 2020. Graymatter still rarely collabs outside of his city, but, like I said, the works he’s creating in his hometown are worth investing time into the network of Richmond. But I think this project is the best balance between static noisewave and traditional hip-hop, with Graymatter doing a bang-up job spoonfeeding the familiar boom-bap drums with the slightly less palatable (but no less profound) waviness of boom-baps new wave. But how does Graymatter throw these sounds together and it just… works? HOW in the hell do Estee Nack and al.divino find pockets on some of these beats? Just like any other great magicians, I’m sure they don’t reveal their secrets.

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