Fly Anakin - At The End Of The Day [2020]

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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“To me, music is the only thing that everybody does in this world and they don’t have to do it. Everybody is involved in music.”

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A little over a year ago, one of the most famous street muralists in the world named Nils Westergard painted a mural of two local Richmond artists, producer Obliv and rapper Fly Anakin, on the side of a building. I remember seeing this after Nils painted it in pictures on the internet, and although I had only heard of Fly Anakin through a single feature on CRIMEAPPLE and Big Ghost’s Aguardiente LP, I knew that showing love to local artists is always a good thing. What I didn’t know until recently was that there were quite a few people that were upset about this mural, and not just the usual shut-ins who think “rap music bad, get off our streets”. There were a contingent of people who thought that Fly Anakin, who is still now in 2020 an underground artist (a label he doesn’t necessarily cosign), doesn’t deserve to be honored in this way, and there are many other people in Richmond and hip-hop at large that would deserve the mural painting *more* than Anakin. While I at the very least can see where these people are coming from, what people seem to be missing is the point of “inspiration”. Nils didn’t paint Anakin and Obliv just because he thought they deserved to be immortalized in that way, he did it because he was inspired by another artist, as an artist himself, to create art. But if you were to talk to Fly Anakin about the mural and ask him whether or not he deserved that shit, he would probably tell you that this level of recognition was in the stars from the beginning.

Fly Anakin (left) and Obliv (right) stand in front of thier immortalized selves, a mural painted by Nils Westergard in 2018

Richmond, Virginia has been Fly Anakin’s home for all his life. His family life wasn’t the healthiest: his father being mostly absentee, he grew up to form a strong and unbreakable bond with his mother. Anakin has said that his mother was the biggest source of his drive to be a rapper, someone who believed in his abilities and pushed him to try and make something of the talent that he so clearly had. I can’t profess to know how hard it was having her pass in 2009, but the 15 year old at the time used the memories of his mother’s support to push him into new levels of fame and recognition, along with the struggles of surviving in a city that wasn’t always flowers and sunshine. Growing up around the drug-dealing street lifestyle, Anakin was different in that he preferred to focus on his true passion: rhyming. He started writing lyrics at 9 years old, mostly in the confines of impressing his brother, but he knew even from a young age that the skills he had were always going to lead him to this point. There’s a strange sense of destiny in Fly Anakin’s writing and persona, where sometimes you think “how can this guy be so confident in his abilities”, but then you realize that Anakin isn’t rapping for the present, he’s rapping to establish that legacy for the future, where it’s not an if it’s a when as to becoming famous. In 2011 he formed the Mutant Academy with his close friend Henny L.O., and from there the crew has grown to encompass some of the most impressive talent from the RVA, with Big Kahuna OG and Koncept Jack$on rounding out the bars department, and some of the best abstract producers in the underground right now with people like Graymatter, Foisy, and Unlucky Bastards scoring the groups upward journey. With several projects under his belt including the door-opening Chapel Drive with Koncept Jack$on, Backyard Boogie with Ohbliv, and what will one day be called a modern classic in the Big Kahuna OG assisted album Holly Water, Fly Anakin goes into 2020 with little to prove in terms of his abilities and vison. He continues a strong year for the Mutant Academy with the full-length LP At The End Of The Day, 17 tracks and 37 minutes of taking people back to a simpler time in rhyming, where whether or not your raps made headlines was based off of one thing: flow.

BSTFRND (top left), Henny L.O. (top center), Big Kahuna OG (top right), [Unknown] (bottom left), Fly Anakin (bottom center), and Koncept Jack$on (bottom right) are some of the collectives brightest minds

Fly Anakin’s energy on the microphone on At The End Of The Day is one of the first things you’ll notice about him. He’s in-between a shriek and a yell for most of his delivery, but you can usually find a sense of smoothness behind the rough exterior. Anakin the writer is something that is hidden beneath his delivery, with the structure-game and penmanship heavily reminding me of a Supreme Clientele era Ghostface Killah (it continually surprises me how influential this album was to a lot of cats these days), albeit with *slightly* more focus. He’ll wander between topics of smoking bud, his hometown scene, lots of bars referencing his sexual conquests and shorties out there wildin, and sparing threats and violence (never gang-related, mostly being ultraviolence for the sake of comedy or character building). There are a couple instances of clarity and attention to a certain subject, like on Wavey Wun and Buffy, both being, in their own twisted ways, love songs, but for the most part his lyrics can be difficult to pin down and follow. You’ll hear that flow is of ultimate importance to Anakin, with precedence being placed on making strings and sentences that are entertaining and silky to listen to, but there is little in terms of cohesion lyrically for a lot of what he’s saying. Special attention is paid to rhyming within pocket, and he’ll even tackle very difficult drum patterns like on the track Hood Rockstars with relative ease. The majority of the appeal of Fly Anakin’s writing style boils down to being entertained by spastic, aggressive, slick-rhyming bars that call back to some of the earliest days of hip-hop. He has said that people like Method Man inspired him to begin rapping in the first place, which makes a lot of sense when comparing him to people like Big Daddy Kane, Q-Tip, and even Redman to an extent (maybe without as many punchlines) when looking to how Anakin presents himself as a writer. That old school approach applies to not only Anakin’s rhymes, but also the instrumental style of the record as well.

The beats on here seem to be based on a different sound from the 90’s than many of Fly Anakin’s (and all of the Mutant Academy’s) contemporaries. While artists like Griselda revel in the mafioso and cinematic leanings of the early Wu solo albums and older acts like Kool G Rap, Fly Anakin’s beat selection sounds like it would fit more in the realm of A Tribe Called Quest and pop-era Biggie Smalls. There isn’t any roughness found on the album besides the crackle and breaking of the old vinyl samples on tracks like Proceed On and Whatchu Need, with the majority of the project consisting of smooth looped samples buried in warmth and haze. Graymatter’s Proceed On is a great opener to the record instrumentally, combining a lot noise into a fuzzy, texture-laden rawness that few beatmakers can pull off, a swell of organized chaos with the low-mixed drums, drones, and sparing bass. Whatchu Need (again Graymatter) is more structured but not less fuzzy, but somehow even more bizarre in it’s choices instrumentally: there are all kinds of bells present in the mix like boxing bells, train bells, bike bells, giving this sense of a living and breathing city that they live in; it’s like a ligher-hearted and lower stakes Only Built 4 Cuban Linx beat, with RZA’s DNA coursing through it. Hood Rockstar’s (…you guessed it, Graymater) deserves special attention for that drumline, something that would have worked well enough on a beat tape, but to actually *rap* over it is a feat few rappers could pull off. Don’t Smoke and Cartoons are two tracks driven by a strong bassline, with the former stripping back the noise in favor of strongly played individual notes, and the latter bringing in that clutter that Graymatter is such a master of with these odd ascending frog noises that might be guitar and woozy drones. Rap Music fits well within the ATCQ comparison, with the stripped back drums and samples provided by Obliv being reminiscent of an old-school beat-loop, simple yet effective in allowing the emcees to let off quick bars. Eddie Drummond is much more high-class and clean in comparison to the other smooth tracks, giving almost a West-Coast vibes with it’s chimes, fast pace, rolling hi-hats; it gives me almost like DJ Quik vibes with how refined the parts work together, maybe with a bit more clutter to it than Quik would use. Scroll Talk is another that pulls more from the pop-rap playbook of the 90’s, showing itself as a smooth and sensual sample flip with a lot of flash and bling to it. The lower BPM, the female vocal sample that sound like it’s on some TLC shit, and the almost danceable bassline reminds me heavily of a Biggie Smalls/Puffy “for the ladies” track. Vocal sampling is something that is touched on a few times during At The End Of The Day, with All Ceven providing both Ingenuity and Buffy as more examples of a subdued but effective female sampling. While Buffy is more pitched-down experience that uses the vocals as a sort of underlying drone below the boom-bap drums, Ingenuity is more forward with it’s use of choral samples and sunny/triumphant string sections; both still establish All Ceven as an incredibly talented producer, with elements of both Madlib’s unorthodox nature and 9th Wonder’s soulful-to-the-core approach to making beats. But the tracks Wavey Wun (Let Me Fuck Your Girl Part! Pt. 5) and C-Span are the two boldest and heavy-handed uses of vocal samples on the entire record, but are two different feels entirely. Wavey Wun (produced by none other than Fly Anakin himself) is a skeletal and tightly looped wailing singer, unchanged and untampered for the entire runtime; it’s a bit much, and I would have liked to have seen a little change-up, but the basswork and sharp horn notes provide a great canvas for Anakin to flex his muscles. C-Span follows the same line of thinking, with Sadhugold’s vocal sample equally as sharp as Anakin’s, but the instrumentals morphs and reforms constantly with other samples cutting into the mix seemingly at random. The “If I Give Up On Life” refrain is cut and chopped between other vocal harmonies, but all framed within a fast bassline and rolling drum-kit.

Big Kahuna OG and Monday Night’s LP Thug Tear from earlier this year, which was split down the middle production wise between Graymatter and Unlucky Bastards, was another win for the Mutant Academy

But that “last track” C-Span leads into what I assume is a bonus cut, because There Will Be isn’t listed on his Bandcamp page at all, it just came with my CD purchase on the end. But I feel like it would be a disservice not to talk about probably my favorite collaborative cut on At The End Of The Day, and maybe my favorite instrumental on here (if you can’t even call it that). The beat is entirely made up of a keyboard melody that has this Sunday morning chord progression to it, with the only thing framing the beat frame wise are snaps at every beat. The beat is beautiful in it’s simplicity and vulnerability, and as an outro to a record I couldn’t think of a more direct way to show thanks and appreciation for the art than to strip it back and let the vibes roll over you while delivering sick bars. The track features Anakin doing what he does best: flowing immaculately, but he throws in a hilarious bars about his height not getting in the way of being able to get with the baddest baddies, and how he shouldn’t stress about life because he’s “literally Fly”. Big Kahuna OG opens up the track with realness, telling the people in the studio with him to put their phones away while he’s blessing the mic (you can even hear the people in the background laughing at this). But you have got to give props to this mans amazing cadence on the mic, hitting all of those beats with flawless execution; it’s like there’s no wasted seconds or breaths in his verse, like he really had some shit to say on this track. Monday Night has much more of a laid-back and charismatic flow in comparison to Kahuna and Anakin’s guttery aggressions, with his deep voice and loosely stitched bars might sound uninspired in a solo context, but within the confines of this little trio here (and within the broader grouping of Mutant Academy, which I’m sure he’ll be apart of soon) he provides a highly appreciated dynamic, like U-God in the Wu-Tang.

There are only a few other featured artists on the album, as it seems much of the time Mutant Academy artists prefer to work within the confines of their organization, and if someone fucks with you then you are worth your weight in gold. ANKHLEJOHN, the Washington D.C. emcee, appears on the track Buffy, and he’s probably the nastiest motherfucker on the entire album, spitting an entire verse about being a pussy-chasing bastard detailing his sex-life with this crazy vixen from south Richmond. On the most topical track on the album, ANKH does a great job providing the most topical feature. D.C. is actually a lot closer to Richmond than many people realize, being less than a two hour drive between them, and the association between the two cities I’m sure will only grow as the two scenes grow too. The other non-affiliated artist (although he still hails from the RVA) is Nickelus F, who appears on the track Whatchu Need to deliver a true ’94 time-capsule of a verse, where while the accent is a tinged with southern flair the delivery and lyrics for some reason remind me of a young Large Professor, and the way he’s mixed so loud into an instrumental that’s already loud and boisterous as it is gives him this larger than life persona. Big Kahuna OG is the only other feature on here, taking hook duty on Scroll Talk seriously with his smooth club chant “scroll if you want scroll, scheme if you want scheme”, and a more intricate and limber flow on his verse on Cartoons showing how much a chameleon this guy can be in the face of different beats.

The Mutant Academy logo, designed by Fly Anakin himself years ago

At The End Of The Day is sort of like Fly Anakin taking a victory lap around the previous chapter of his career, and now that he put out his most personally defining album of his career he knows, like he has always known, that the only direction to go from here is up. The Mutant Academy and the RVA as a whole are on a come-up that needs to be watched closely, not just for the incredible albums coming out within the collective but also the ancillary art that is spawned in their wake like Nils Westergard’s mural. While the content we make is entirely different (and of course his murals are worth a thousand of my little “write-ups” here on TSDK), I feel a strange sense of attachment to Nils Westergard in terms of the value of inspiration. The man could have made a mural for any number of people from Black Thought to Eric B, but he chose Fly Anakin because of how inspired he was by not just his music, but his story too, where he lives, and how larger than life his vision is for his future. In the same way I went into this week wondering what I was going to write about, but I knew my decision was made whenever I looked up who Fly Anakin actually was. He’ll continue to inspire people like Tha Soup Dude and Nils Westergard because that’s what people like Fly Anakin do, that’s why they’re here with us now. And for all of that negative shit that comes from people asking “well why does Fly Anakin deserve the mural anyway”, break it down to them like this: inspiration can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time, and capitalizing on that inspiration to create a piece of art like Nils’ mural, at the end of the day, is a beautiful thing.

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