Nepotism bedamned, Zilla Rocca is the rap Tracer Bullet. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are proud too– mediums have been consulted. The second and long-overdue video from The 5 0′ Clock Shadowboxers Slow Twilight is here. “High Noon” at 5:30 p.m.
Download:
ZIP: 5 0′ Clock Shadowboxers-Slow Twilight (Left-Click)
“Zilla Rocca Forever” may not have the same ring as “Wu Tang Forever” or even “Donna Martin Graduates,” but the South Illadelphian’s verse over the “Forever” beat from De La’s recent Nike Run Tape, is further evidence why he’s the most rightful inheritor of Aesop Rock and Atmosphere’s abstract rap legacy. Like those two, Zilla’s appeal might be inherently limited to those who shop at Trader Joe’s and once read Kierkegaard in Philosophy 101, but for those whose tastes extend further than Freeway mixtapes, he’s one of the the most interesting and innovative rappers around, one averse to cliche and complacency, and blessed with a rare sense of self-awareness that allows him to admit that he actually shops at Trader Joe’s (if TJ’s Goat Cheese pizza is wrong, I don’t want to be right).
The rap Jack Bauer has laid low since dropping the 5 0′ Clock Shadowboxers album in July, prepping a follow-up Broken Clocks EP (dropping next month) and incinerating an array of beats that remain unreleased. An advance of what’s in store, the “Forever Freestyle” finds Zilla and Has-Lo ruminating on the short shelf life of rappers, aging, and the difficulties of sustaining buzz in the Internet age. The pair have the gift of making rants seem like real concerns, a lost art in an age of emcees bitching about being unfollowed on Twitter. If more rappers following their lead, they wouldn’t even have to go to summer school.
Download:
MP3: Zilla Rocca & Has Lo-”Forever Freestyle”
MP3: Zilla Rocca-”Beatle Bitches Freestyle” (over Mono/Poly’s “Beatles Bitch)
The beautiful thing about hip hop is that you can say some of the weirdest, most inane, ridiculoid phrases, but say them with conviction or jest, and suddenly you’re creating New Speak. From “rap at high speed strawberry kiwi” to “gimme them girls with the pumps and a bump”, it’s not really what you say, but how you say it. Try this on then:
Rattlesnake caught in a wheel well, strawberry in an ostrich throat.
Gully.
Ten, the second album by Anticonners Why?, Dose One, and Odd Nosdam as cLOUDDEAD, is a study in pop-rap filtered through a William Burroughs MPC then dumped onto cassette and reinterpreted by three white guys jonesing for a critical beatdown. They don’t present themselves as inside joke to the culture, nor are they self-aware white liberal arts students itching to make an album after listening to Midnight Marauders for the 17th time. The arrangements of the beats rival Prince Paul’s work on early De La albums in terms of unpredictability and penchants for sampling British etiquette records. The tape hiss and shuffling of drum patterns at random are hemorrhaged from the Beat Konducta’s vaults. Dose One does he best to erase any memories of lyrical joustings with Eminem at Scribble Jam, while Why? harmonizes beautifully about dead dogs and b-ball courts in Cincinnati. Oddly enough, none of these guys seem to have a serious drug problem.
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