It looks as if your entire SoundCloud underground rap scene is constructed on reference for the time being, however there’s a superb line between being unbearably spinoff and wielding distinctive influences for recent outcomes. The previous: 9 Vicious stretching his voice and letting out pterodactyl ad-libs the very same means Barter-era Younger Thug would. The latter: Feng detailing his Instagram Reel area journeys over beats that filter M.I.A.’s kala by way of plugg-indebted strategies. Sayso Says, the debut album from 18-year-old Atlanta rapper Che, positioned him comfortably within the latter class, synthesizing rough-around-the-edges punch-in rap with Crystal Castles-esque witch home revivalism. Even when his try wasn’t flawless, the audacity to rap over these beats was sufficient to determine his inventive imaginative and prescient; if his Alice Glass ribcage tattoo wasn’t convincing sufficient, the glitchy, arpeggiated synth leads and sidechained four-on-the-floor patterns would do the trick.
On his second album, REST IN BASS, Che largely abandons that sound, as a substitute creating one thing just like the platonic excellent of a rage rap document. He pushes his vocal performances to the acute, typically concurrently increased in pitch, louder in quantity, and extra vicious in supply, like he’s channeling 10 Entire Lotta Purples’ price of Playboi Cartis inside his chest. When proto-hyperpop parts seem, they’re distorted and clipping above every little thing else, just like the mixes on Ken Carson’s A Nice Chaos. REST IN BASS is defiantly overstuffed, crushing acquainted rage concepts collectively with out stalling in a single place too lengthy. It seems like browsing static-possessed tv channels.
You possibly can hear Che’s love of dance music all through. Take “Hood Well-known,” the place he alters traces barely like a home producer sneaking in sudden deviations: “I really feel it in my chest/I’m the most effective” turns into “It’s in my flesh and blood/I’m the most effective,” with the “I’m the most effective” being copied and pasted. When he lands on the identical beat with an identical inflection, he sounds simply as machine as human. He makes use of an identical method on “Die Younger,” shuffling between 4 totally different traces like a DJ rotating by way of results. This exact manipulation of quick phrases is a method he employed on Sayso Says tracks like “Nunca Hacer Cocaina” to emphasise rhythm, however on REST IN BASS, they work as textural overload.
By way of manufacturing, REST IN BASS ranks among the many most adventurous rage initiatives. Positive, it nonetheless prioritizes noise over something, however these aren’t the standard looped, simple soundwalls; they’ve way more motion and vary. “Doe Deer” begins with kitschy blast beats and guitars earlier than exploding into darting VGM notes and laser 808s. It’s like if Uzi’s Pink Tape was deep-fried, or if somebody was taking part in Twisted Steel within the studio. “By no means Too Younger to Die,” with Chicago rapper Chuckyy, backs down from the rave tempo, although it maintains depth with dramatic orchestral stabs that sound straight from the Glo period. The drum patterns on “Model” have a throwback really feel that’s a comfortable match for featured artist Xaviersobased, however the mixture of SFX, the siren-like lead, and bowling-ball 808s douses every little thing in zoomer brainrot. Whereas the beats pull from varied areas and scenes, they’re threaded collectively by unrelenting distortion, the lingua franca of REST IN BASS.
Che’s exhausting hedonism is commonplace in rage, although the album’s strongest moments come within the uncommon situations of vulnerability that give him extra character. On “Dior Leopard,” the album’s finest monitor, his indulgence raps really feel numbing till he name-drops his mom (“Momma discovered I used to be doing medicine, then she spazzed out/She’s not taking part in video games, OK, she kicked my ass out”). The tales of drug dependancy and infidelity are a lot extra urgent—as if this have been the information these mind-numbing drums and frenetic bass drops hoped to hide. All of a sudden, the mysterious Opium clichés collapse on themselves, revealing a touch of desperation. By the point the beat adjustments and the road “I referred to as the plug, mentioned I’m dying” emerges atop the dizzying combine, it seems like we’d not make it by way of the night time. The actual nausea units in when REST IN BASS seems like life or demise.
