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Image via The 6th Letter / Matt Barnes
5 On It is a feature that looks at five of the best under-the-radar rap findings from the past week, highlighting new or recently discovered artists, or interesting obscurities.
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Image via Mr. Yote
Mr. Yote – “Master Ushi” / Mr. Yote & Iglooghost – SEWER_RAP
Mr. Yote is a rapper from Sacramento, CA. In his Twitter bio, he describes himself as “da rula that manuvas like a hot dog chalupa. moo-moo fruit.” He raps like someone removed all of the hyperactivity from Busdriver’s flow (not necessarily a bad thing) while maintaining some entertaining animation. He tweets about ravioli, Yoshi’s Island, and “laying peasants out with my green-toe gauntlet.” He made a pretty strange song called “Master Ushi” that’s a lot of fun for people who like avant garde-ish rap. He also made an excellent little EP with producer Iglooghost that seems intentionally designed as a transmission from an alternate universe—dusty beats, affected vocals, dense samples, and excellent, abstract rapping.
In short…
HELP KEEP RAP WEIRD.
Listen to Mr. Yote.
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Image via The 6th Letter
The 6th Letter – NorthernPlayalisticGetHighMuzik vol. 1
So much music that either draws inspiration from the Golden Era or purports to pay homage to it feels tired, stuck in one style or another. Toronto rapper The 6th Letter’s debut album NorthernPlayalisticGetHighMuzik vol. 1 never falls victim to the nostalgia trap thanks to a meritocratic restlessness, giving ample love not to some idealized, East Coast centric sonic sampling of 1994, but rather a blend that draws clear and relatively even influence from the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and South.
The primary differentiator, of course, is that The 6th Letter is from none of these places on the traditional hip-hop map. NorthernPlayalisticGetHighMuzik vol. 1 is a view from just above the border, a fascinatingly transparent love letter to a specific moment in time. It rarely touches on more than weed, women, and classic rap references (some obvious, many less so), but it feels more genuine in its tribute than many projects that appear to pretend that dusty samples and multi-syllabic flows are a revolution in sound.
Also of note: recent supposed OVO Sound signing Jimmy Johnson shows up on one song.
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Image via Bryan Sampson
Lon’Givenchy – “47LOwance”
Very nice to see rappers who’ve been featured in 5 On It passing the love forward. Rochester, New York rapper Ars-Nova—whose EP The Story. was a highlight of this young feature’s fourth edition—sent me Lon’Givenchy’s “47LOwance,” a song that plays like a well-executed outtake from Lootpack’s Soundpieces: Da Antidote. For fans of abstract, quasi-intellectual-spiritual-stoner hop, that’s a great thing. For everyone else, it’s definitely a thing. Figure out if it’s your thing below.
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Image via RANDOMRAPRADIO
DJ Red Alert Goes Berserk (Full broadcast from April 1989)
Sometimes the universe heeds your call.
This week I thought to myself that the previous two editions of 5 On It had been a bit heavy on pulling from the Soundcloud slipstream and a bit light on historically-minded finds.
Two birds with one stone here thanks to GRANDGOOD and incredible Soundcloud user (and likely future fixture of 5 On It) RANDOMRAPRADIO.
This particular window into the past is a reggae-heavy radio set from legendary DJ Red Alert’s Kiss FM show. Come for the nostalgia, stay for Chubb Rock’s charmingly anachronistic takedown of the Grammy’s which still somehow feels about as relevant in spirit as ever.
A brief intermission: If you find yourself in Queens, NY during the month of May, keep in mind that the Queens Library is celebrating 31 Days of Non-Stop Hip-Hop. There are certainly worse ways to welcome spring in rap’s hometown (though the borough of birth is just a few miles and subway stops north of the festivities).
And now, without further ado, Master P rapping like Future…
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Image via Master P
Master P ft. Travis Kr8ts – “Independent”
After all these years, Master P still excels at absorbing various rap styles in entertaining ways. On new single “Independent,” Future’s staccato flow serves as the source material for Master P’s familiar drawl.
It is incredible that Master P is still making music and even more incredible that it’s better than a lot of the similar-sounding rap coming from artists half his age. While his name rarely gets tossed around with the legends of hip hop, Master P deserves credit not only as one of the genre’s first great artist-moguls, but also as a rapper who appropriated styles while maintaining his entertaining singularity.
Master P is 43 years old and we can only hope that most of our current hip-hop fixations rap half this well when they’re his age.
