It’s an album by a rapper, but not a rap album. On “Secret House Against The World”, Buck 65 finally pulls off the transformation we’ve heard about since he signed to Warner: his reinvention as a folk-rock singer. There are still a few raps, with scratches courtesy of D-Styles, but Gonzales and the musicians from Tortoise are also on board. And much of it is simply gorgeous.
Rapper and producer Soso crafts a singular brand of hip-hop – skeletal, stripped-down and spare, with a sound unmistakably his own – that has reached its fullest expression on his recently released album, “Birthday Songs”. We caught up with the man who first introduced us to the intriguing, little-known hip-hop scene tucked away in Saskatchewan, deep in the Canadian Prairies.
The major-label debut from Buck 65, Halifax’s inventive rapper and beatmaker, hardly sounds like an album designed for mass appeal. It feels more like a mixtape. The Canadian strings together his best production sketches and rambles over them. His ambitions to reach a wider audience would come with the next album. But on “Square”, the music is already – or still – gorgeous.
After several years of activity around the Nuyorican Café and the Rap Meets Poetry movement, High Priest, Beans and M. Sayyid finally stretch out over a full-length album, accompanied by DJ E. Blaize’s electronic sounds and backed by a handful of underground hip-hop icons. True to their name, the Anti-Pop Consortium deliver a harsh, challenging brand of rap. But it’s absolutely brilliant.