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.

The Box Cutter Buzzz Is Back

In 2017, I wrote a post about The Box Cutter Brothers making the move to release their latest (at the time; I think they've since done a vol. 5) album on vinyl.  Well this summer, one half of the Cutter duo, Drasar Monumental, is back with his solo debut; and I'm happy to report it's also on vinyl.  And this one's interesting, because Ayatollah is certainly the better known of the pair, with an unquestionable track record, having spent decades producing hot tracks for artists like Bee Why, Screwball, Inspectah Deck, Cormega, Tragedy, The Dwellas, Mos Def, Master Ace and the list goes on and on forever.  So it was a pretty safe bet the Box Cutter albums would be at least fairly solid.  But Drasar doesn't share much of that history; and outside of the Brothers' collaborative albums, he's really only done those (admittedly pretty sick) MF Grimm records before.  I mean, even I could make a good record with that man as a partner (the secret? Delegate, delegate, delegate).  So the big question is, without Ayatollah, how's Drasar going to stand on his own?

I won't keep you in suspense - I was really impressed.  Production-wise, he opens with his most impressive cut, "Bells."  At this stage, the label "90s throwback" may be as much of a repellent ward as it ever was an alluring siren's call - I love me some old school Hip-Hop, but I don't want the genre stuck in the past.  However, when something sounds this good, labels like that don't even matter.  This song obviously brings Lord Finesse to mind, as it uses a substantial, two-line vocal sample from his "You Know What I'm About" for the hook.  But it would bring Finesse to mind anyway, because this fits in perfectly with his early 90's production aesthetic; the track, which literally loops up some smooth bells, could easily have been the B-side to "Hip 2 da Game," if Finesse hadn't opted to go the hardcore posse cut route.  But then this song kind of winds up going that route, too, as two-thirds through the instrumental entirely flips and becomes a rough sonic attack with aggressive battle raps. And while I'd say Drasar's strongest suit is his production rather than his MCing, he's still capable on the mic.  You know, think of rapper producers like Diamond D, Showbiz, and Extra P.

But once that opening track switches from smooth to gritty, it pretty much stays in that lane... which I suppose is more in line with what you'd expect to hear looking at the album cover.  But the lyrics start to get more interesting on these harder core tracks, anyway.  "Fine Art of Survival Part 2" (the first part was an entirely instrumental song on Box Cutter Brothers III) gets into some serious sociopolitical subject matter that adds some welcome weight to the project:

"No bank deposits.  Now my girl's actin' awkward,
'Cause with no money in America, they treat you like you're damn near retarded;
So I went to college, with no money.
I was hungry; became difficult for me to study.
Now the situation's lookin' ugly; my own family don't fuck wit me."

The content resonates perfectly with the beat.  Again, sometimes his lyric writing can be a little awkward - he opens the above verse with the old line, "I was so poor I couldn't afford to pay attention."  But the fact that his bars aren't super polished actually in a way works in his favor.  Like this is just real talk from a regular man, not some clever rhyming jester who's packed every line with three bits of wordplay and a pop culture punchline.  "The Murder Game" is a rather cutting take down of your small time neighborhood criminal, a theme he follows up on and broadens out for "Snake Mode," which makes clever use of a Whodini vocal sample.  Then "Perpetrator Overkill" and "Unpredictable" kick us into pure battle rhyme territory, with two killer beats reminiscent of those classic early Rebel Alliance records, right down to the scratch hook (which Drasar also does himself).

Yeah, it's just those six tracks.  Hardcore Overdose Sessions is basically an EP with no absolutely no filler, but then all the instrumentals are included on the flip filling it up to a full LP length.  As you can see, it comes in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-themed picture cover, pressed on burgundy wax.  There's also a CD version with the exact same track-listing, including the instrumentals.  The label is pretty cool, making the CD look like a 45, with little three-dimensional ridges so you can feel the grooves.  You can cop both from vendettavinylvietnam.com.

The Return Of the Box Cutter Brothers

So, late last year I did a video about the ill, Vietnam-themed records MF Grimm has started coming out with.  As a bit of an addendum in that video, I talked about another project his producer put out on their label: a CD by The Box Cutter Brothers.  The Box Cutter Brothers is the duo of producers Ayatollah (who's worked with everybody from Mos Def to Moka Only to Rakim) and Drasar Monumental (Grimm's producer), and it was a breakbeat CD, where Ayatollah produced the first half of the beats and Drasar did the second half.  The one I had in my video was their first album, but they'd actually put out two more by the time I made by video.  Part 2 was also on CD, and I think Part 3 was mp3-only.  But now Part 4 is dropping, and they're putting it out as a proper, vinyl LP.

But if you've kept up with this blog, you probably know I tend not to get terribly excited over strictly instrumental hip-hop.  It can feel like holding the blueprints instead of living in a house; I want vocals, I want the full song experience!  I've discussed this before, so I won't carry on about it.  But if you want to see why Box Cutter Brothers 4 really got my attention, look at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture cover... "Vocal Version."  Yeah, every track on here is a full, vocal song!  And they didn't go the expected route of wrangling all their friends and connections to make a producer-themed compilation album, like Marley Marl In Control or that DJ Bazooka Joe album on Dope Folks.  They're doing all their own rapping; like when Diamond D decided he didn't need Master Rob anymore.

And I'd say the Diamond D comparison is fairly apt, because neither of them are going to make anybody's Top Fives, they both know how to flow over their own work enough to make a solid record.  Ayatollah goes for a very low, literally whispered flow over his smooth, somewhat dark beats.  It's got a very atmospheric, organic feel that draws you right in.  He re-uses his vocals for two songs at one point, but it all sounds good, which is what counts.  Drasar, on the other hand, takes a very different approach.  Here, each song is very distinct, and he has a more bombastic style.  I'm not talking Mystikal or Waka Flocka levels here, he's actually got kind of a Pete Nice style; but after the A-side, you really feel the extra energy.  And instrumentally it's the same; he rocks some pretty crazy loops on his side.

And it's not just rapping over breaks.  There's cutting, plenty of vocal samples and hooks.  These are full fleshed out songs.  But, still, the production is primarily what's on sale here.  I recognized a few samples... a stray piano loop on the Ayatollah side, and they sampled by homeboy 2XL.  But even when I was familiar with something, it was completely re-purposed and contextualized into a new, unique instrumental.  The only weakness to this album is that there's no real single to grab you.  You know, like JVC Force's whole album was hot, but "Strong Island" was that amazing joint that immediately got everyone hype.  Drasar hits some nice, head-nodding peaks (and substantive topics); but there's still no "Strong Island" equivalent here.  The whole album is one tight listen, but you have to be prepared to settle in for something subtler than quick thrills.

So yeah, this is a full LP in a picture cover available directly from Vendetta Vinyl, and I assume will start appearing at the usual online retailers soon.  AccessHipHop had the first two CDs, after all.  And there is also a CD version of this one, for those who'd prefer that over wax, plus an LP/ t-shirt combo.  The fact that this is labeled a "Vocal Version" does suggest to me that an instrumental version might follow one of these days; but nothing's been announced so far, and this is the ideal version for me anyway.  I was impressed by this record - you can listen to soundclips here - and I hope BCB 5 is a Vocal LP, too.

MF Grimm's Vietnam Trilogy

(I don't know if you guys lost track of MF Grimm over the years like I have, but I've just caught up, and his new records may be his best yet. Correction: My bad! The first CD, Butter Soul, was actually produced by Architect of The Homeless Derelixx.  Though the second one's still by Drasar (with Ayatollah).  Youtube version is here.)