Going Left is a monthly column that highlights exceptional work from indie hip-hop acts. Read previous editions of the column here.
Backwoodz Studio is a haven for boundary-pushing MCs from all over the map. Aethiopes by billy woods was highlighted in a previous edition of Going Left, and his Armand Hammer brother-in-rhyme Elucid is next up with his latest effort I Told Bessie. There’s a lot of great indie rap out there, so I want to spread the love around and not have too many repeat appearances from labels so early in the column, but some work is just undeniable.
Rapper-producer Elucid is at his unbridled best on I Told Bessie, first orienting us in a lecture from the great Joy James on “Spelling,” and interspersing her words with his own observation: “They’ve made this star unsafe and this age, primitive, though your mind is somewhere else, yo ass ain’t.” Perhaps that’s why the rest of the project sounds like he’s sending back signals from his own sonic universe. Somewhere away from this rock, he’s “a dancer in the dark, running tangents off the mark.” As he tells us, “If you’re seeking understanding, you should jam this where you are.”
Like life under the project of white supremacy, understanding isn’t spoonfed on I Told Bessie, and the album follows the rest of Elucid’s stellar catalog in its nonconformist thrill. Elucid is lyrically incisive throughout the project, but he doesn’t come through the front door with overarching mission statements or easily-digestible protest tracks ripe for co-option. It’ll take multiple listens for listeners to make their connections, but while you’re concocting your overall impressions, the first one will be how amazing of an MC he is amid his cavernous, experimental production from producers like The Alchemist, Sebb Banks, and himself.
You may be hooked when he rhymes, “My fist refused to have its palm read/ Accumulated bruises, manhandling harms hair” on “Old Magic.” Or you may be swept into the inertia of one of his verse-closing bars like, “I’ve already closed the book of whatever/ All the stories they tell us” on “Smile Lines,” where tension builds from bar to bar, and the emphatic finale thrusts like a rollercoaster taking its deep dive.
His writing style wraps freeform poetrics around dagger-sharp mantras and adages like “Jumanji’s” “Niggas know my body, you still slither on your belly” and ambiguous couplets like, “Going through it, maybe’s like a threat / Might be, then it ain’t, if I hold my breath.” For as resolute as he sounds throughout the project, he knows he’s tiptoeing the minefield of possibility on “Impasse,” rhyming, “Just a little bit of grace in the moment she could flip / I can feel the certainty slip around my neck.” When he croons, “This may be the last time, this may be the last time” over the ominous soundscape, it feels like an ancestral expression of impending doom that’s both bygone and ever-present.
Billy woods teams with Elucid on four tracks, including “Nostrand,” an indictment of power and its consequences, where he rhymes, “Every day I walk past people beggin’ to live/ Every day I walk past the living dead/ From me, they didn’t get a cent.” Their poetics coalesce as well as they ever did here, no doubt sustaining fans’ desire for more Armand Hammer music.
But this is Elucid’s solo journey. I Told Bessie is a ride that defies the logic of location. On “Ghoulie,” he rhymes, “I’m over here, right there, thattaway/ Scatterbrained, spatter wave Anti-matter, nano nigga, shit, I had to hit ‘em.” And the album closer takes us to “Guy R. Brewer” in Jamaica, Queens where he’s “in the circle outside, some hands together, some in the sky.” It’s fittingly subversive that Elucid saves his most compact writing for the outro, where many MCs are conditioned to spill their souls in verbose, hookless songs. But by that point in the project, Elucid is already well spent, and all that’s left to do is seek solace. Is he outside a church during a night service? At a candlelight vigil? Whatever the occasion, the starlight is looming, offering a spectre of hope away from the realities of our rock that he explores on the project. Throughout I Told Bessie, a tribute to his late grandmother, he illustrates a freedom that’s otherwise inanimate.
Here are some other dope new projects to check out:
Ankhlejohn, 'The Four Knights Game 2'
For a while, to be a rap fan in love with lyricism was to be stuck in a meta morass. Too many gifted wordsmith’s catalogs have been wasted with observations on how good they are at rapping, how much they love rapping, or how others aren’t rapping as well as them. That was the genesis of rap, and it’s still a worthwhile topic sometimes. But after a while, a fan couldn’t help but listen to certain ‘90s and ‘00s MCs and wonder: But what are you about? What’s on your mind?
Ankhlejohn is an MC who would excel in a cipher of any era, and he’s chief among a new class of artists who are keeping things interesting by infusing their personality and worldview into their bars. Instead of telling listeners about their rap superiority, the DC rhymer has shown it by weaving in life reflections, game, and hilarity into a compelling catalog. That’s exactly what he does on The Four Knights Game 2, a followup to May’s The Four Knights Game. He smacks us with a sequel just two months after his previous 8-track project, and this time around, he has features from Monday Night and Fly Anakin.
Monday Night’s smooth delivery sounds great over the groovy “Real Consequences,’” delving into a story replete with the gem, “I’m thinkin’ leave at any cost like I’m flyin’ spirit.” And Ankhlejohn and Going Left alumni Fly Anakin go back and forth thrilling on the aptly-titled “Man Respect Man,” with Anakin’s emphatic delivery showing the duo’s potential as a powerful 1-2 punch.
Elsewhere on “Man Respect Man,” Anhklejohn rhymes, “I’m from the land of the PCP, the water look like toilet shit,” a gruff homage to his home (that this DC native knows is sadly true). The bar slices through the smooth production, encapsulating the album’s general tone. Ankhlejohn has a palpable confidence and agitation working in tandem, and he orates with a delivery that feels well-versed in the East Coast rap canon, but is uniquely his own, as his DC accent peeks out from the crevices of certain inflections.
When he rhymes on stirring samples like “Doing It Wrong” or “Something Sad,” there’s a compelling juxtaposition between his blunt, piercing lyrics and the smooth loops. But the album’s most compelling moments are when he delves into the noxious production of “Gold and Relics / Fathers Day” and “Free YSL” or “Hardy Boyz,” where it sounds like he’s pulling you under those brown waters he referenced on “Man Respect Man” and into an abyss where he “slowed it down so you can catch now get off my dick,” as he rhymes on “Free YSL.”
The Ankhlejohn experience is to press play and know a quotable is around the corner, whether he’s advising “if you a rap artist just be careful the feds watchin you” on “Common Courtesy” or hilariously sniping that “you could never understand my journey you became a fan off Reddit” on “Gold and Relics” or even when he’s surmising that “techology is taking over and the Black woman is made for it.” He’s wise, but not preachy. Funny, but not fatuous. And most importantly, he’s lyrically gifted, but not lost in the gift. The Four Knights Game 2 is a fun, worthwhile listen from a lyricist at the top of his craft. You can listen for the game, or just “visualize me in a room getting a foot rub from Martha Stewart,” as he rhymed on album closer “Hardy Boyz.”
Santana Fox, 'Girl Next Door'
“I’m a true homebody sittin’ in my garage, writin’ verses to the music, makin demos where that shit just come to me,” Santana Fox rhymes on “Super Rich Kid,” the outro of her Girl Next Door album. We were blessed with the results of those singular sessions on Santana Fox’s 12-track project, which synthesizes the image of diary entries scrawled amidst clouds of smoke.
From the beginning of album intro “Girl Next Door,” Fox brings you into her world and nestles you close with her charisma. She rhymes with a seer’s composure over the track’s cinematic strings, setting the tone for the rest of the project. You hear the bass in her voice, but it doesn’t overpower to the point of fraudulence. Instead, you’re left to ponder her voice’s hazy highs, which sound like a billowing cloud of smoke that you want to chase as it sprawls out from song to song, coloring her life and times.
On the track, she rhymes, “I gotta get mine and get off, head to my nirvana cabana galore / my underground palace Atlantis, / my yard resemble Eve garden, if you down to take a trip.” The line from the romantic allure to her technical rhyme ability, no doubt honed in part by being around her father, late legend Prodigy of Mobb Deep.
While she’s undoubtedly her own artist with her own voice, her gifts dovetail with several areas where Prodigy excelled as an MC, most notably in her unorthodox flows. She sounds most at home with the flow displayed on “Girl Next Door,” but she explores a range of cadences and flows throughout the project, employing creative vocal approaches. The way she melodically stretches the word “obviously” in the middle of “P.M.S.” to switch the rhyme pattern is a slick pivot that shows off her skillset. And in one juncture of the sultry “Mystique,” she changes speeds mid-bar as she rhymes, “What you want me to pop this pussy for a real nigga? Please, as if I’d lower my standards just to be acquainted with you fake bitches, kick rocks.” Some MCs would rework the line to fit a conventional pocket, but Fox knows exactly what she wants to say, and will always find a way to say it.
The trials of love are a heavy theme throughout the project, but Fox’s sense of independence and self-determination mostly wins out. On “Mystique,” she tells men that she’s not responsible for their idealizations of her, nor is she interested in living up to them. On “Scar Souvenirs,” she rhymes, “readjust my crown to get right back on track, now I see my worth” in the face of mistreatment, and “Heartbreak Hotel” carries similar themes. But the project is not all about love, at least in the traditional sense. On “Nocturnals,” she and Pohlo go Bonnie and Clyde, while on “Gypsy” she’s in murder mode, “roamin’ through the forest with the big dogs.” On both tracks, she sells her menace with an empathic tone over sinister keys.
Fox is an effective storyteller, most notably on album standout “P.M.S.,” where she chronicles the pain of that time of the month over production that fuels the despondency of lines like, “When I’m looking in the mirror see no innocence, quick the wicked thoughts crept in.” The track is an honest, ambiguous reflection where her actions aren’t right or wrong, they’re just nature, as she admits, “I’ll go back to the girl that you like by the end of the week.” And with more projects like Girl Next Door, she’ll be the rapper we love.
Wrecking Crew, 'Sedale Threat'
Rap and basketball have long-lasting, undying links. Both basketball and hip-hop started in the parks for most, classic projects are likened to championship rings, and hip-hop heads on Twitter can’t wait to pull out the stat memes to show how much an artist ate on a song.
It’s easy enough for the hip-hop community to reference the well-known aspects of basketball, but there’s even more artistry in turning the game’s obscurities into art. That’s what Philly-based super crew Wrecking Crew did on Sedale Threat, a 12-track project that was forged through “projects, parenthood, tours, survival gigs and major personal health upheaval,” as noted on their Bandcamp page.
The four-man crew of rappers Curly Castro, PremRock, Zilla Rocca, and producer Small Professor are in full attack mode throughout the project, with each artist grabbing the mic from the last and executing like a fast break, running in perfect synchronicity. Sedale Threatt is a point guard who played 14 years for five different NBA teams, and he was nicknamed “The Thief” for his ability to steal the ball. Wrecking Crew’s Threatt reference is par for the course of the project, where the squad reels off the names of players who may be unknown to Complex readers who were born after Threatt left the NBA for Europe in ’97. You’ve heard plenty of LeBron and Kobe references, but how often are names like Chris Herren, Tremaine Folkes, and Steve Colter rattled off?
The obscure references are fun easter eggs, but it’s no mere gimmick they’re leaning on here. Anybody familiar with the crew’s solo pedigree knows their skills, and those who don’t can get acquainted with this project. “Crooked Leg Colter” orients the project in its most exciting pace, as the three MCs take turns unfurling over high-energy Analog(ue) Tape Dispenser production, before Zilla Rocca jokes, “You stay with some herbs, that’s the law of attraction.”
The crew is joined by a couple of free agents who get involved to help their cause. Hiero’s Casual opens up with a fiery verse on “Behemoth,” while Fatboi Sharif offers typically surrealist bars to “Empty Out The Register,” where the guys repeat the America-indicted refrain, “See what we can get away with: that’s America.”
But beyond the pointed barbs at wack MCs (and everyone else in their ire), the guys also get vulnerable. On “No Threat,” both Zilla Rocca and Curly Castro get real about being wary of violence, with Castro rhyming, “Never where no Nike airs, thought they’d make me target” and Zilla Rocca reflecting, “I haven’t had thrown hands since ‘98 / but always have nightmares of fightin’ where my arms wouldn’t raise.” The track is a sobering moment of candor amidst the lyrical boasts. The more life experience one has, the more they understand how fragile and fleeting it is. There’s a similar moment on “Supreme Rock,” where PremRock delves into a self-effacing stream of consciousness and rhymes, “My tracklist lack cohesion, but not passion or hustle.”
As the album description says on their Bandcamp page, “Sedale Threat is power through community where the next man up can be a superstar on any given night!” And it’s even scarier when the whole squad is clickin’.
If you like what you hear, make sure to check out Complex’s Going Left playlist on Spotify, which is updated monthly with music from the column’s featured artists.
