I will probably scream until I’m Blu in the face that the Hellfyre Club deserve a fraction of the attention that other LA rappers receive. But it’s cool. I am as tired as you of rap writers getting agog that people will pay for Wale records but won’t support their personal favorite subterraneans (mine is Mardou Fox). But really, 170,000 Wale fans can be wrong. I was.
This week, Open Mike Eagle dropped his Extended Nightmares Getdown: The Dark Blue Door because he is a fan of Kafka dreams, James Baldwin, Billy Pilgrim, and brevity. In the words of L. Christmas: I like it a lot. The litany of rappers and producers loosely grouped in Nocando’s Hellfyre Club also Voltron’d to drop a new label compilation. It is more hit than miss and Kail absolutely cluster bombs the first track. I demand that he and Schoolboy Q do a record together. Recommended if you like art, art rap, Art Vandelay, marijuana, Back to the Future, and rappers who embody every issue that Childish Gambino talks about, except that they rap well.
Tracklisting and a funny note from Mike Eagle below the jump.
Download:
ZIP: Open Mike Eagle-Extended Nightmares Getdown: The Dark Blue Door
ZIP: Hellfyre Club-Veneris Nigrum
Mike Eagle:
My album “Rappers will Die of Natural Causes” was released last summer on Hellfyre Club Records.
The entire record is a treatise on perception and black male identity.
Hopefully I wont have to answer that question in interviews anymore.
The above sentence is the single most pretentious thing I’ve ever written that I actually meant.
The sentence above this one proves that within five sentences I can go completely off-topic.
The album moves in the same sort of manner. The title track sticks to the thesis in a straightforward manner (twice.) but in exploring the topic I end up touching on everything from Weezer, to NBC’s “Community,” to the order in which I select dishes to wash.*
*silverware, cups, bowls, plates, pots/pans for those keeping score.
I have so much to say on the subject that I’ve chosen to expand some of the material into a series of standalone EPs. Four to be exact. Each one anchored by a remix of the song on the album that inspired it.
The first in the series is the “Extended Nightmares Getdown: The Dark Blue Door”
1. Nightmares (Busdriver Remix)
2. Billy’s Quagmire (prod. Blockhead)
3. Four Days feat. Serengeti (prod. Busdriver)
4. The Secret to Negro Alchemy (prod. N/A)
5. Experimental Dream FLCL (prod. Awkward)
This EP can be obtained for zero american dollars for you and you only at the following link.
This first EP is a group of songs that were written by my shadow self. They all feel like the darkest part of happy. They are cotton candy monsters that smell like night-time. The prevailing themes are reminiscence, anime, and my grandmother’s ghost.
You go ahead and get your thoughts together about it. Sit with it and let it haunt you a bit.
