Sit Down, Man has been my go-to walking around town music, and I've decided its my favorite rap album in years. So why not check out its precursor mixtape?
On SDM you hear Heems and Victor reacting to the reaction to this album, creating a rapping-about-bullshit-about-rapping post-modern reference spiral for the ages. The genesis of that chain starts here, with a rap album that sheds some light on the pair's weed-rap reputation. They rap about weed plenty, but beyond that the languid pace, the heavy production, the meandering instrumentals, create something far more blunted than the wild ey'd mirrorballing of the followup. It sounds almost like an EL-P album, and he's featured on some of their later stuff, so maybe that's no coincidence, with bass rumble, laserfacing, and general murk and menace.
Of course, the clever turns, the cultural referenceballs, the smart-dumb switcheroos are all in place here. The seeds are certainly planted, but for my money, this is just too murky, lacking the clarity and swagger of Sit Down, Man. If I'd heard this first? I might have been charmed by it, but now its mostly useful, Almost Killed Me-style, as a provider of context for its better big brother. That said, this works better as background music to an activity than Sit Down, Man, which really requires your attention, which is a legitimate role for legitimate music 3.5/5
You might like this if: You want to listen to clever, dense rap, and prefer dense, stoned production to Sit Down, Man's comparatively playful approach.
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