Sometimes a single is easier to talk about than an album. Sometimes there's more to say about one song than a collection of them.
This is often the case with New York rapper MIKE. Known for his prolific output, cryptic lyricism, experimental (often illogical) beats, and sobering images, he's one of the most popular contemporary young rappers from the era of Standing on the Corner. With a dry, disjointed flow, strikingly tragic songs, and a rare lack of overinflated ego, MIKE is rightfully considered one of the best doing it these days. He's relatable, he's skillful, he's conscious, and best of all, the man's got bars.
The SOTC "post-genre" genre (lol) and many of its NYC orbit - MIKE, Earl Sweatshirt, Medhane, MAVI, and many more - are unique because of the sheer amount of effort, passion, and intent they infuse their music with. Race and all the aspects of society it permeates is always on the forefront of their works, along with personal tragedy, wealth, interpersonal relationships, and experimentation. There's so much that can (and is being!) done with the fusion of language and Blackness, it's incredibly refreshing to dive into artists that are as impenetrable as they are ingenious.
Blackness, at its core, is illegible. It's massive; it's inclusive as well as diverse; it's subversive, contradictory, independent, eternal. There is no one Black art, no linear Black musical canon. It resists perfect categorization or definition. It rebels against understanding; it is inherently abstract, always experimental. Rap music - known the world over as perhaps the most Black musical genre - is so consistently exciting, in my opinion, because stakes its experimentation and individuality in the paradox of artist identity; everyone wants to be unique, but at the same time, everyone wants to be recognizably Black, recognizably wealthy, recognizably intimidating, etc, etc.
"Rap music is slave music. So, slave communication, you know, had to be encrypted. You gotta code. [...] Really, if I understand it, then, it's like teaching. If I understand the subject, even if you don't know it off the bat, I can teach it to you, because I can paint this picture very clearly, if I know what I'm saying. Yeah... writing is a very meticulous process for me, cracking my own code, how it come out garbled..."
- Earl Sweatshirt
Everything and nothing are the same, all at once.
I'd like to get into MIKE's new lead single for his forthcoming album Weight of the World. "Nothin2say (Never Forget)" is immediately disconcerting; the production is warped, and a high-pitched sample of 1984's "Carro Alegórico", a slow-paced Brazilian ballad by Moraes Moreira (RIP) transformed into something upbeat, idealistic, yet fractured and off-tempo. MIKE's flow is deliberately off-beat, almost discordant to the looping vocal sample.
In a Vulture interview following the release of his Some Rap Songs (what he describes as a "hissing thing", Earl gets into what makes a loop work for rap:
"It’s infinitum. It’s the snake eating its tail. I keep locking in the loops. To write something complete to a loop, I feel like it takes a lot. [...] And you have to be potent for that shit to matter. If you ain’t got shit to say, niggas really are not gonna want to hear you on a loop. You can get away with it when the beat is changing and showing you when the emotion changes. But that loop, that’s just a background."
(Sorry for all the blockquotes here. Earl always has a lot to say, and I think he's saying these things here better than I could.)
That's the idea: the loop can be something complete on its own or something broken, something unusual, but it's the background, the aesthetic, the foundation for which the artist must speak. As much as it can feel like it's detracting from the lyricism, it's enhancing it, making a gritty image or verse even dirtier, even more complex.
No one understands this like MIKE. In the single he deftly juggles a number of topics; social isolation ("When I needed you, you gone, but you said we was friends / This shit I'll never forget"), loss ("still grievin' over moms, no, I'll never forget"), the hustle ("And I was grindin' all along, I was lettin' 'em rest / It's young MIKE, I give it all, and respect to the dead"), and more. None of these are new topics to hip-hop, but it's the approach that matters, from the dizzying beat to the hypnotic rhyme scheme employed throughout the song. Beneath it all the looping sample chugs, interrupting and fusing it all together at the same time, like a chilling thought in the back of your mind that you just can't shake.
Everything works together much in the way Earl alluded to in that first blockquote; what might seem encrypted is really a flower of language blooming within your ears (if you're listening to a good MC that knows what he's doing, like MIKE). You drift, you share memories and images, you relate, you coalesce. That's art.
Give the song a listen (link below is to MIKE's Spotify, not a download) and stay tuned for the full-length coming at the end of June. I for one am hyped like nothing else for what's in store.
DREAM...
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