Monumental Wreckage

Oh yes, it's another gem from Vendetta Vinyl.  This is the latest release by Drasar Monumental entitled Lifetime Of Wreckage.  Each song is layered with samples that feel like they were always made to be layered together.  Busy but never over-crowded.  There's a lot of change-ups, too, which can make it a little confusing on the first couple of spins to determine which song you're on.  But you'll catch on quick enough.  The back cover credits spell out concisely, it's a one man show, "beats, rhymes and scratches: Drasar Monumental."  And it opens with Drasar catching wreck over an equally murderous track.  Hard battle raps with a creative dramatic flourish, and even a tinge of righteous fury:

"Rhymes give you more than a slight chill; my mic's type ill, you're just another sucker that I might kill.  You know the drill, my skill gives 'em nightmares, equivalent to getting thrown down a flight of stairs!  Wake 'em up, tapin' 'em up, my box cutter will taper you up.  I don't give a fuck, rhymes spray in all directions.  I slay competitors.  Hated and vile enforcer, ultra-violent sorcerer, bringin' ya horror straight from Sodom and Gomorrah.  USA, home of the Satanic; I set you on fire at your pagan gatherin', and leave 'em staggerin', babblin' and mumblin', my only mission is to murder 'em."

After that, the subject matter starts to get more complicated.  "Scavengers" smooths the mood out slightly, but still remaining pretty hard, like that feeling you'd get when Big Daddy Kane got on a posse cut.  Drasar sets it off on the kind of people he doesn't like, "waitin' on a hand out.  Runnin' ya mouth but your plans never pan out."  But the more serious matters are still to come.

"Fratricide 1993" goes in on how, when faced with political oppression, we're more likely to kill each other than unite against the greater corruptive forces, "grew up Baptist, now you're a savage.  I can tell from your ways and actions.  Grew up from a B-boy, skating rink to Cuban Link.  Never thought I'd see you in the Clink.  Must've been a plan: the way we crumble, cops cuff you.  Caught up in the struggle, we scramble and shuffle.  But it's all meaningless.  Penny pinchin', but end up dying penniless."  It features an MC named Hogon Plus, who worked with Drasar previously on Box Cutter IV.  He has a similar voice and flow to Drasar, to the point where, when I was first listening to this I was wondering when he was going to appear... until he name-checked himself and I realized he was already on the mic.  That's not a criticism, though, because Drasar sounds pretty great here, and Hogon mixes in his own style of tongue twisting wordplay without sacrificing the gravity of the topic.

The last track is "Black Calculus Part 3" (Part 2 was on The Box Cutter Brothers' III CD), the catchiest, most head nodding of the beats.  But the racial injustice laid bare in the lyrics is still as raw and pertinent as ever, "uneven playing field, inequality.  Fighting over turf but we don't own the property.  They make a mockery of our misery, rewrite history; it's all lies and trickery, fuckery and deception.  In 2020, your mind is your strongest weapon.  Born leaders never meant to be followers, we're descendants of gods and goddesses."  This material is gripping and compelling to the point that I don't think we can keep Drasar in the box of a producer who can also rap competently, a la Diamond D, Large Professor, and so on, but a lyricist who needs to be heard in his own right.  His production just happens to be brilliant, too.

This is a perfectly tight EP with just four songs and the instrumentals on the flip, so there's absolutely no fat.  Every passing second is a killer.  And as you can see above, this is a proper 12" record in a cool picture cover, though I believe there is also a CD option if you find that more convenient.  But I think this is one you're going to wish you had on wax years from now; this feels like a project that's going to stand the test of time.