Goddamn these dudes hit hard. This is the most visceral, percussive rap album I've heard in a damned long time. There is no fat on this motherfucker, a hooking fist of rhymes, slicing through the air like a ball off a 3 wood and exploding on impact.
There's this moment on El-P's verse on the first track where the whole production trapdoors into a pit of bass, the beat coming in doublehard while saxophone desperation writhes in the background and it is *staggering*. It's the best production moment on the whole thing, but there's a lot on that level, artsy synth pulses, classic basslines, rockist basslines, classic beats, fucked up beats, building atmosphere, shifting slowly and then turning itself inside out, sideways, a sinking ship that blasts into space.
The best hip hop is effortless, and this pulls that off while being knotty as hell, unshowy complexity that feels like the only way to get it all into a million miniscule attention spans, a well designed machine that seems to exist by order of natural law, glancing off issues social, modern and personal all. Bracing, fascinating, essential stuff 4.5/5
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