Showing posts with label weird music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weird music. Show all posts



“Restoring the feel” is more than a phrase for Wisconsin wordsmith, Obi Khan. With his latest opus, “THC-4”, Khan draws a lyrical line in the sand between himself, and his new-school contemporaries. In a class of freshman, the Madison-based madman gives 16, sample-heavy reasons why he is among Honors. His beat selection is inarguable; consisting of some of the most diabolical, yet divine boom-bap you’ll hear all year. Predominately produced by Thanos Beats, these instrumentals are tried and true of the cornerstone of 90s Hip-Hop. They feature dingy, vinyl-samples and apposite vocals embedded in each borrowed record. From a production standpoint, the joint “Where Do I Go” has to be one of the album’s crowning moments. It features a Draculean melody, voiced through an organ, chaperoned by rusty boom-bap drums and a vocal sample that echoes the words of the song’s title. On the record, and every other that graces this masterpiece, the Obi Khan delivers excellently. He raps with such a guttural growl in his delivery, that seems to spawn from an unseen abyss within him. This apocalyptic aggression is exactly what amplifies his lyricism; making your ears want to listen to every bar he spits. On tracks such as “Bionic Man”, “Gods (ft. Thanos & Arewhy of Brotherhood 603)”, “Faded”, “Kamala (ft. Professa Dibbs)”, “Time”, “Itch The Scratch (ft. Thanos & Jabba the Kut)” and “Check the GRhyme (ft. DJ PAIN 1)”, the Midwest rhymesayer utterly disembowels the microphone; rapping circles around any of your favorite emcees. Although, I have a slew of personal favorites from the project, it can easily be played front to back without any skips or interruptions. Obi Khan has crafted a timeless hip-hop masterpiece, worth a thousand times more than he’s offering it for. If you’re a fan of lyrical greatness, dirty boom-bap, and overall, underground ingenuity, “THC-4” can not be ignored.



Album: THC-4 (Releasing Aug 24th)



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With each and every passing year, Canada proves itself as a force to be reckoned with. It has birthed some of the most prolific and talented mainstream artists, whose crossover has dominated American airways. Singer/rapper, Grand Fisher, is no exception to this paradigm; and with his debut EP, “Real Friends”, he proves just how poised he is to take every dancefloor on the continent by storm. 

The production on this album is grandiose and electric; surging with techno-like basslines and vibrant, pop synths. Coupled with the groove of their pounding, syncopated percussion, even the slightest shuffle to these beats becomes eerily irresistible. Your hips will get away from you; and if you were not at a rave or nightclub already, this chromatic, EDM instrumentation will make you wish you had been. Instead of upstaging his production with brash, overbearing vocals, Fisher bounces beautifully between the foreground and background of the music. When the Ontario artist sings and harmonizes on tracks such as “Better As Friends”, “Boy Bye” and “Ghosted”, his voice, dripping with autotune, is pushed to the zenith of the mix; where it is most powerful and reviving. When he raps on those same tracks, his voice blends flawlessly into his production, and he himself becomes an extension of the very music he's flowing on. All in all, this project is a creative, club-ready debut; and if artists like Drake. Justin Bieber and The Weekend have opened the door for potential Canadian popstars, Grand Fisher will most certainly be stepping through.



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