Max Bell has been counting to fuck since he could speak.
Zack de la Rocha working with Killer Mike and El-P makes sense. The former matches Rage Against the Machine’s political ethos; the latter produces suites that crush skulls like distorted Tom Morello guitar riffs. On “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck”) both continue to prove their also two of the best rappers capable of creating more mayhem than the guy in the All State commercials. A ski-mask clad Mike asks for the heads of police officers while his eyes are glued to The Anarchist Cookbook. El-P is the vagina whisperer with a tilted New York fitted, a chip surgically attached to his cold shoulders as he arraigns both judge and jury. Add Rocha’s voice on the manic mantra of a hook and you’ve already made one of the best rap songs of the year. But, fuck, there’s more.
If you listened to Rage Against the Machine, you knew Zack de la Rocha could rap. You also knew how much he loved rap. He covered Afrika Bambaataa and brought Volume 10’s “Pistol Grip Pump” to poli-sci majors who promptly hit Google in search of a hood called “what the diff.” What no one could’ve anticipated was that he would be this good. As I said, Rocha’s voice on the hook over El-P’s battering ram of a beat would’ve sufficed. But he wrecks the anchor leg with intricate and incisive rhymes that would make favorite “political” rapper go back to reading Marx for months. He is a fellow with melanin dropping Miles Davis and Rakim references while burning mattresses and busting at global grand dragons. If he and El-P do an entire record I will be counting to fuck until it ends up in my inbox.
