Bristol and Gary might be polar opposites, but purple connoisseurs like Gibbs and Joker can easily find common ground. Between “The Vision” and “Highway to Hell,” the former is fast becoming the go-to vanquisher for these electrocution bass cuts. The reasons are pretty simple. You need a wrath of God voice to cut through the klaxon synths and San Andreas shake of the low end. Put someone like Kweli on a track like this and they’d soon as drown in the English Channel.
Though it’s superficially on some robotic futuristic George Jetson shit, the snares on “Vision” are nearly slow as a Codeine-cranked banger. Someone as swift as Gibbs can hit this double-time, weaving in and out of the beat like a game of Frogger. It’s almost too easy for him here and Joker would be well served to do a remix EP with him, Nocando, and Bun B.
As for Joker’s full-length, Sach nailed it, describing it as a “kind of watered down dubstep album, but a really fresh urban pop record.. He obviously has a ton of ambition and while he doesn’t always quite connect on a songwriting/vocal level, he’s still got a totally original style and the album works as more than the sum of it’s parts. At the end of the day, it depends if you’re comparing him to Kode9 or Kanye West. It sounds like he wants to be Kanye West.”
Download:
MP3: Joker ft. Jessie Ware & Freddie Gibbs-“The Vision (Let Me Breathe)”
