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. 

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.

Azomali - A MANGO A DAY!

Imagine complete civil unrest, as in every person in every city taking to the streets. At first, of course, it's met with the weapons of the state: police brutality, human rights abuses ... you know the drill. And as the cities burn with revolution, the rainforests burn for industry. Now imagine all that coming to its only logical conclusion. At the end of the day, even military oppression is a Band-Aid. Or, like my father always says, you can only put down a people so long until they pull you from your fucking home. When the revolution ends, then the hope, at least, is that the rainforest and its people can both breathe again. Obviously, there's more to it than that. Revolution, by its very nature, is unending. Rainforests regenerate except when they can't. 

A MANGO A DAY! (Keeps the Colonizer Away), Azomali's first multi-song release since 2019's Guyaba Mixtape, feeds on the nuance undergirding all these generalities. If you've been following his Instagram over the past few years, then between some of most impressive off-the-head freestyles ever recorded, you've witnessed a number of scenes not unlike those generalized above. But seeing is one thing and feeling another. As opposed to social media, AMAD! has a deprogramming effect. It bumps in the corazón, jump-starting empathy. Impressively, it accomplishes this in under 20 minutes with just six songs and five field recorded interludes. For my part, it certainly didn't hurt that one of those six featured Johnny Storm and Azomali together on a track for the first time since they were known respectively as Sky Walker and Kaotik Ellement. But I digress.

Azomali's music ranges from transportive to outright transcendent. The scary thing is that it's only getting better. This naturally should tempt you to wonder what's next. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. For now, I suggest simply taking as prescribed...

4DHxH & Azomali - "2:22 A.M."

I love a wild moniker. Case in point: the Outer Galactic Marauder Faction. This [landing] site's interdimensional observers might recall the name from a series of visual communiques Blaq Kush launched several years back, called Kushan Sundaze. The second installment of that series featured Kush along with his fellow Faction founders, including one by the name of 4DHxH, a relatively innocuous handle, that is, until one comes to find it stands for Fourth Dimensional HitchHiker! 

Time-warp to December 12, 2022, whence 4D has teamed with the elusive 1492 auteur Azomali for a one-off called "2:22 A.M." Speaking to the titular subject, the artist formerly known as Kaotik Ellement raps, "Overlook the Earth from the distance before the shine within / I do not understand Father Time so why would I align with him?" This, of course, could also be heard as a response to any and all Azomali acolytes asking how long it'll be until his next album drops, which is to say, probably a while and also it's already here, as it's always been.

AZOMALI - "Tofu With Brown Rice" Live! + Freestyle

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by THIS IS WHERE THE MANGOS GROW🥭 (@azomali1994)

AZOMALI burns down UGHH Blog's Mic Session then kicks a freestyle that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt he's one of the dopest poets alive. (This appears to be from an appearance on the LA Natives Podcast, whom he has also given a very insightful interview.) If you haven't been following him on Instagram, you're missing out on so many brilliant off-the-head sessions like this one. 

Fuck a List 2019

Roc Marciano - Marcielago

Theravada - Xennis Rodman

Lisaan'dro - M.A.D.E. (My Allies Died Early)

Elucid - Every Egg I Cracked Today Was Double Yolked

Josh Alias - Growing Pains

Azomali - Guayaba


WiFiOG - Disrupt

Darc Mind - What Happened to the Art?

Christ Kenneth - The Abomination of Desolation

AM - self.

A Z O M A L I - Where the Mangos Grow !

Best Of LI, no Press shit. Words next week. Rakim Week tomorrow.

AZOMALI - "Fuck Trump"

What more needs to be said?

Kaotik Ellement - "SACRED GROVE" (Freestyle) ft. Sky Walker

New organics from that tree hugger Kaotik Ellement, whom you ought to have heard on LongIslandRap.Comp V2. Background commentary by his fellow Freeporter Sky Walker.

Kaotik Ellement - "Morado" / "G.O.D."

Long Island has its answer to the Project Blowed movement, but it's not an open mic showcase at a health food spot; it's a 21-year-old from Freeport who goes by Kaotik Ellement.

Kaotik Ellement isn't the only MC on LI who has an impeccable taste in beats (his Soundcloud page features him rhyming over instrumentals by Nujabes, Botany, Prefuse 73, Madlib and DJ Krush among others), but he's the only one I've heard who blesses these beats with unforced ahayauasca references and a flow worthy of comparison to the West Coast's most eclectic collective.

The songs below are a few years old, but they go a long way toward demonstrating that Kaotik is much more than just a creative kid with a dope voice and a good ear. And they show what he can do when teamed with equally impressive local talent, like Hempstead-based producer/instrumentalist Lobos y Robos. Look for more from this MC (and hopefully this duo too) in this near future.