Rap game flooded with a deluge of “5 AM in Toronto” freestyles. Exercise some creativity. Pick up your pickaxe. Dig up some dirt. Ring Zilla Rocca, throwing right hand hooks like Rocky, the real Rocky, over Gaslamp Killer and Adrian Younge’s Veteran’s Day distortion. A few people didn’t get GLK’s last record. A comment section sideliner chimed in that he should stick to his DJ sets. But for those who love psychedelia in all it’s squalor, it felt like a new slash through the fabric. Or as El-P more eloquently said: “Gaslamp incorporated the tricks, turns and spirit of his scene, and made it special through his unique soul and grit…Every song idea comes from places most producers ignore or are ignorant of. They could only come from a DJ who specialized in psychedelia for years. It’s one of the first completely contemporary electronic records that doesn’t sound like an electronic record.” In the words of Bill S. Preston: listen to this man, he knows what he’s talking about.
Only a rapper like Zilla Rocca, steeped in the noirish aesthetic could bring something that feels right. Dead Vets don’t crowd surf. Eating off of rats, still malnourished. Hip and hopping in that urn. Everything hurts. Torture. The dead vets buried with no map to the grave site. The mixing is as muddy as it gets. This could be a requiem for the right wrong man or an amphetamine to fuel you before you go reaping. Dead vets. Summon them through seance and they can still go pop.
Track below the jump.
