Another Planet - People Are Not Your Friends

After serving 16 years for murder conspiracy and robbery, Phiik returned home to find his longtime partner in rhyme Lungs ready to share the spoils of his decade-plus multi-diamond remix run, and the reunited duo dropped the song of the summer, and then they did it again. Kid Art did all the videos, which look so clean they feel like AI even though they aren't—a compliment akin to calling a real freestyle written. Yo, the girl in the jersey blowing bubblegum?! Freak. Hoes. All I know. Oh wait. That's not what's happening at all here, is it? Steel Tipped Dove didn't flip Billy Idol. Lungs does look like a young Paul Simon. Lungs looks like Willem Dafoe. Phiik raps like a gatling laser. 

Josh Alias - Atlas

I've been summering in the Hamptons. Nah, I'm playing. I just haven't felt like writing anything here for a few months. But now, as with this site's legendarily inspired origin spell, mad Long Island rappers have dropped dope records in sequence. So, like Jesus getting out of jail, I'm back in an American adaptation of the French New Wave. 

Speaking of Jesus, one of the pieces I've been meaning to cover for the longest is this, the "final secular album" from Josh Alias. I'm not going to lie. The first time I listened to it, I wasn't crazy about it. I liked it, but it also made me want to wind back the 30-something-song biblical flood of a mixtape he dropped prior to his last album. Instead, I took a few days and relistened. 

I have an uncomplicated relationship with religion, which is to say I've never practiced one in my life, and I currently believe God is most likely the cat my wife and I saw on the Bay Parkway while driving home this evening. I also have a cherished handful of friends and relatives who worship Jesus Christ, and that's cool. One might even say Jesus was the OG JuCommie.

So, anyway, on the holy-trinity third listen, Atlas clicked, and the world perpetually on his shoulders fell into place like a Sisyphean boulder, and now I really like it. Will it take you, phantom-reader rap fan, three listens to enjoy this album, or fewer, or more? Does that have anything to do with your appetite for religion, spirituality, and Gomer Oz Dabar? There's only one ... way to find out.