KAD - ALPACA

DOOM's passing put the following fragment on this website: "the dollar-bin sample selection that was in constant conversation with itself; the smorgasbord of pop culture references that mined philosophical treatises from Saturday morning cartoons and Saturday afternoon Daikaiju films." Doombot or not, KAD pads the vocab. His crates seem to recall this description of the late villain more than they do his music itself, like a hologram baseball card. I'm not saying the holographic principle is an intelligent design plant intended to get creationist text books into middle-school science classes across the Western world, but I'm also not saying it's not that. It's ALPACA, you herd?

Half Pint & MC Glamorous - 2 Queens and a Mic

From Glam to Islam to SpitSLAM, and from the Son of Bazerk to the mother of all ladies of Long Island rap team-ups, it's themmmmmmmmmm, as in the royal they. Read that with an echo chamber and hear this through gender affirming circuitry. The least expected five-song EP of the summer just might also be the most refreshing, like a 70-degree day in August while the ocean "still holds the heat" as per my neighbor. Call it community organizing rap, the cement in public service announcement.

Akari - edits vol. 2

Lucidly ill audio-machinations suffuse with skittering light drums. Does the speed of sound remain constant absent an observer? Trees' forests in the plotline take hold. Rap still? I once thought I'd reached my goal of writing liner notes. Then I read William Parker's WEBO sleeve. The experience was like swapping bodies with my 17-year-old would-be rapper self hearing Breeze Brewin for the first time, i.e., transcendent/formative—take your pick. Somebody with editing chops lay his acapella tracks over drill beats. Takers? This might be another one of those be the change you want to see in the world moments. Peace to Eight Immortals.

Dana Hilliard - Clouds / Anybody

Floating, I watched a robin soar past just overhead. And I mean 'just' overhead, no-sudden-movements close. Next, it came at me head-on and then back the other way. As I bobbed in place, it repeated its flight pattern over and over like we were stuck in a loop. I thought that robin and I were having a moment. "It was protecting its nest," my wife tells me, "trying to intimidate you." What can I say, birdie? Maybe environmental cues aren't exactly my forte. She stays away from the nest, my wife. But it's on our property. "The bird doesn't respect the government." It believes in squatters' rights, and sure, me too, but then also maybe it was just a keen display of aerial prowess. I'd like to think that. After all, it's not as if I was climbing the tree or even touching it. I was just floating on below, well within dropping range, oblivious to my avian comrades.

AZOMALI - Music for Solo Camping Vol. 1

Trim all the fat. Cut past the meat to bone itself and arrive at the question around which all civilizations live and let die. 

Would you rather fight a bear or a shark? 

This is not a test. It's the test, fool! Well, what's it going to be? Who's the apex predator now? Music For Solo Camping Vol. 1 proffers the kind of headspace one needs to contemplate such central queries and crucial conflicts. It's a place of roaming epiphany, like the realization that "Hay" has essentially the same beat as "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa." Only here may one truly and completely consider the implications thereof. 

Keeping it 100, I'm no camper. I'm a beach cat not a mountain lion. In other words, I'm team shark. For one, you can just hit the shark in the nose. Like Cam's coach said, he might be pussy. Second, whereas Jaws was fiction, Grizzly Man was a goddamn documentary. You must never listen to this. You must feel it between your toes like morning dew-coated blades of grass.

If everyone is an island, and here we are—you, me, us—then living unhoused equals solo camping. 

Confines - Work Up the Blood

When I was about 15 years old, I wrote and began shooting a script for a parody of the wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat entitled Beyond the Fat: The El Grande Story. One character in the film was a wrestler named the Vigilante. For his finishing move, he would pull out a gun and shoot his opponent. Because of this, he was always on the run from the law—hence, the vigilante. (In hindsight, the fugitive probably would've been a more appropriate name, but I was 15 and super into Death Wish at the time.) The script may be lying here somewhere. When Confines drops another project, I'll dig it up. Until then, enjoy this joint from December 2021.

Blaq Kush - There's Always Hope Vol. 4

Blaq Kush's mom speaks my language when she opens this album proclaiming "I can't tell you anything about this business, I don't know anything about it." This has essentially been my pitch to Kush to put a tape out on Long Island Rap Records for the past three years. To be fair, it was also my pitch when he contacted me eight years ago asking me to be his publicist. I'm nothing if not persistent. Hell, with my swimmer's ear, I may as well be the proprietor of "Deaf Man Records." "But I can tell you" that any new Blaq Kush release is practically guaranteed to get run back like "the hottest record in New York City" according to Flex on any given Thursday night. What I'm saying is this: We live in a time and place where Cash Cobain and KRS One share programming blocks. The game is a wrap. Tonight, I googled Blaq Kush and found out about his experimental noise project, This is not Blaq Kush. It's over. We won. Everything from here on out is a bonus track. Let's put two volumes on each side and call it the definitive edition.

Biz Markie & TJ Swan - Live in Boston, 1987

Talks out of turn. Doesn't listen to instruction. Tastes too niche for the mainstream and too common for the collectors. Can't figure out how to get Bing to acknowledge his website's existence. Remains largely unresponsive. Doesn't play well with others? Certainly won't beg anyone to attend the cookout. 

If you read this, I appreciate you. But please understand that as much as I hope you enjoy doing so, it's besides the point. This is all for me and mine, always has been. Your presence is not required. See the comments section for almost every post. Do note the absence of snake oil-selling spambots while you're at it.

In conclusion, "Anybody that don't got the AIDS or ain't on crack, throw your hands up in the air."

Shape - Midnight Geometry

"As long as I've been back and forth from Jerse to Long Island, I can get a crowd response equal to 'South Bronx'" — Tame One, "Detox the Ghetto"

And in the latest chapter of the New Jersey-Long Island cultural exchange program, we bring you Midnight Geometry, the new producer album from Ian "Shape" Morrison. A lazy writer fishing for an easy hook could do worse than pitch the Karma Kids-Smokers Cough sixth borough circuit featured here as the epicenter of outsider rap (and as a lazy writer, you might even work an Outsidaz pun in there somehow). I, on the other hand, will simply point out that the Karma crew has been on quite the pandemic-era album run these past few years such that Midnight Geometry had me revisiting Teddy Brown Brown for the umpteenth time on the ride home this evening and now I'm about to run back Tap on the Glass. Peace to C$Burns for making everything sound right. Peace to Yung Daddy for outrapping all her peers.

AZOMALI & Blu - "Bodega"

"Egg" means two eggs scrambled unless it means two fried. "Cheese" means melted American. A Kaiser roll is the default. If they ask how you want your eggs cooked, it's not going to be good. If they ask what kind of bread or cheese you want, it's not going to be good. If it costs more than $5, it's going to be fucking awful. If you get one egg, call the cops. The hot lunch should look insane. Azomali's right to recommend the fried plantain. The rice and beans also knock. Do the ribs look gooey? Is the person behind the glass cutting them with a knife that looks almost machete like? Does its every chop echo in your bones? If so, you can't go wrong.