After being part of Busta Rhymes’ Flipmode Squad and a quarter of underground crew The U.N. Roc Marciano is one of the indisputable Hip Hop MVPs of the past decade.
The Elephant Man’s Bones is the long-awaited collaborative album from Roc Marciano & The Alchemist, fully produced by The Alchemist, featuring Action Bronson, Boldy James, Ice-T, & Knowledge The Pirate. Roc Marciano & The Alchemist - The Elephant Man's Bones Thirteen tracks, and not a weak one among them.Ĥ. To top it off, sequencing and transitioning on A ethiopes is perfectly done too. He’s as good here as he ever was, and his forward-thinking content is amplified extra by Preservation’s unique and flawless instrumentals. Elucid, Boldy James, Quelle Chris, Denmark Vessey, Breeze Brewin, and El-P (among others) make appearances to add some extra flavor, but A ethiopes very much is billy woods’ own show. As always, it will take multiple listen to digest and be able to fathom his deep semi-abstract bars – but by now it’s undeniable: woods is one of Hip Hop’s greatest poets, along with Brownville’s Ka, to name one of the few who can play in billy woods’ league. Preservation’s dense and eerie production on A ethiopes is phenomenal, and billy woods’ pen game feels like it’s hit another peak. A ethiopes is up there with billy woods’ best albums, on par with History Will Absolve Me, and arguably even better than Known Unknowns, Hiding Places, and Haram – all albums that were among the best 5 albums of the years in which they were released.Ī ethiopes is fully produced by Preservation, who delivered a suite of tracks on Terror Management and the two collaborated again on Preservation’s 2020’s LP Eastern Medicine, Western Illness. billy woods continued his run of excellence in the 2020s, with BRASS (2020), a collaboration with experimental musician and poet Moor Mother, and two more strong Armand Hammer albums – Shrines (2020) and Haram (2021). Together with the projects he dropped as Armand Hammer (a collaboration with rapper/producer Elucid) – Race Music (2013), Rome (2017), and Paraffin (2018), that’s nine straight top-tier projects released in the 2010s. History Will Absolve Me (2012), Dour Candy (2013), Today, I Wrote Nothing (2015), Known Unknowns (2017), Hiding Places (with Kenny Segal, 2019) and Terror Management (2019) are all about as good as it gets. History Will Absolve Me was the first in an incredible run of top-quality left-field Hip Hop albums. An album two years in the making, History… was a molotov cocktail of sarcastic fury, with production to match its uncompromising vision. On the mic, woods is no less of a conundrum, possessed of versatile flows and an ability to not only tackle topics other artists wouldn’t dream of, but also to bring unique perspectives to the familiar ones.īilly woods’ earlier albums – solo and as a member of Super Chron Flight Brothers – are all strong enough, but the next level was reached when woods struck out on his own after the now-defunct Super Chron Flight Brothers with 2012’s audacious mission statement, History Will Absolve Me. but spent much of his childhood in Africa and the West Indies. AOTY.īilly woods is a rapper who defies easy categorization he was born in the U.S. There’s not a moment wasted on skits or other such nonsense, and all 12 tracks are equally strong with nothing but top-tier production and lyricism. Black Thought kills it throughout the whole tracklist and the stacked feature list is top-notch: Raekwon, Joey Bada$$, Run The Jewels, A$AP Rocky, and Conway The Machine (among others) all add value with their contributions, and MF DOOM steals the show with a bittersweet but outstanding posthumous verse on “Belize”. The album manages to maintain attention throughout its whole runtime with ease, not only because of the quality of the music and the vocals but also because pretty much every song has something unique to offer. Danger Mouse’s soulful boom-bap production is elegant and hard-hitting at the same time, and Black Thought effortlessly proves for the hundredth time he is one of the best to ever do it – his flow, his delivery, his vernacular: even in his fourth decade in the game as a recording artist there are few (if any) rappers who come close to the level of skill he has been consistently displaying.Īt 38 minutes, Cheat Codes is a concise affair, and the momentum doesn’t falter for a single second. The long-awaited Cheat Codes is a Hip Hop masterclass, delivering on its promise to the fullest. So this is what happens when one of the most skilled producers in the music biz joins forces with one of the most talented emcees of all time. Danger Mouse & Black Thought - Cheat Codes
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