Four Afghan refugee brothers happily pose for a photo on the bunk beds in their family’s one-bedroom apartment. Little did they know, one of them would not only surpass those humble origins, but use them as powerful lyrical inspiration, before also transcending that. Ascending Vancouver MC Kresnt even used that picture of he and his siblings’ cash-strapped childhood for the cover of his new single, “Apartment 308.” It’s one of many strong tracks on his new album Hustle Sold Separately, out today via The Lunar Cycle.
Kresnt tells Complex Canada that Hustle Sold Separately is “a moment where I reflect on the journey so far as a young Afghan refugee coming to a whole new world and learning to adapt, but also never forget my cultural roots.” And it’s clear from the opening bars that “Apartment 308” breaks considerable ground for South Asian diasporic rap. Over the song’s funky guitar sample and crisp percussion—all evoking Kanye West’s formative Roc-A-Fella production—Kresnt raps not only about his parents’ common immigrant dream that he would secure a lucratively stable engineering job, but also about Allah knowing his destiny.
Album closer “Owe You” also features moving details about Kresnt’s father toiling at a dead-end job in the wee hours, prompting him and his brothers to keep quiet so as not to disturb the old man’s much needed slumber, in an extended shout-out of an outro that also harkens back to College Dropout-era Ye. All that is furthered by Kresnt’s donning of a graduation hat and gown for the video for lead single and opening track “One More Thing” (and yes, its vocal samples are sped-up and high-pitched enough to sound like a Blueprint deep cut).
And while the details about his identity are compelling, Kresnt never settles for the novelty of an Afghani immigrant rapper. Keeping those descriptions succinct does plenty for a demographic sorely underrepresented in rap, while also amounting to a hook to draw in listeners of all stripes. He devotes most of Hustle Sold Separately’s lyrics to broadly relatable slices of life. The album’s best track, “SFO to YVR,” is a viscerally atmospheric number about returning home from a flight, propelled by tight horn blasts and a melancholy vocal sample, made all the more memorable by Kresnt’s lyrical eye for engrossing minutiae. The latter is even truer on “Change Your World,” on which Kresnt immerses you in a memory with a tossed off line about Axe body spray at the bottom of his gym bag. He also adopts a jackhammer flow ala Logic for the track’s climax.
These timeless-sounding new tracks will not only appeal to longtime hip-hop heads, but also pleasantly surprise Kresnt’s already considerable following. After all, this is the nascent MC who hooked a trap- and AutoTune-inclined audience as recently as 2020 with Ahmed. For key track “Soul Search,” Kresnt delved in the Drake vein with a groove-burrowing croon and lovelorn lyrics over a hazy, downcast R&B instrumental.
His range from that on-trend project to Hustle Sold Separately foreshadow a surprise-abounding career. The new album is rendered all the more impressive because it lacks Ahmed’s polish. As Kresnt tells us: “Though the majority of this project was one-take freestyles, I feel as if I’ve been writing this album my whole life. This is Hustle Sold Separately but more importantly this is me, Ahmed Hilal Dabir.”
Stream Hustle Sold Separately below.
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