8/14/22

Coast & Hi-Q

Sometime in the mid-'00s I saw Diabolic tear down a rap battle in Boston judged by KRS-One, featuring a number of local acts and possibly California favorite Okwerdz. Depending on where you stood in the crowd, the night's narrative went "The guy from that hidden Immortal Technique song really killed it," OR "The fix is in!" Like the 2003 American League pennant race, many a New Englander went home hurt that night. 

All of this to say that during a decade today written off as something like a hip-hop Dark Age, there were at least a couple Long Island crews out upsetting the applecart with zero regard for applecart health and wellbeing. Dead Rabbits is one such crew that has kept this tradition (if you can call it that) alive and (mentally un)well. 

In recent months, the crew's in-house producer Hi-Q has put out two projects including Bowery Bruisers: The Remix and Coast & Hi-Q, a collaboration with Dead Hempstead Rabbit Coast LoCastro. It's angry as fuck, as if someone somehow channeled the collective disappointment of failed sports team fandom into a  28-minute character assassination. There's a song called "Muse" about inspiring self-loathing in a person. Any "you" mentioned, whether real or imagined, is doing real bad. 

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