Art by Drew Coffman
Harold Stallworth would seem to be creeping on a come up
Hip-hop’s loose interpretation of “son” is probably the single greatest feat of slang born out of the 1990s. Statik Selektah’s latest SoundCloud charity, “My Sons,” features a reinvigorated Kool Keith employing the term as a noun, verb, adjective and so forth over a smooth, gliding instrumental. It’s refreshing to hear Keith tackle one of Statik’s more polished beats, because while the Bostonian producer has done well to brand himself as DJ Premier’s heir apparent, he’s really at his best when approximating the Trackmasters. And polished is a nice change of pace for an artist like Keith who, for better or worse, spent the lion’s share of his solo career shaking his fist at the clouds. So it’s quite fortunate that this record wasn’t spliced into a Frankenstein posse cut, mucked-up by the likes of Termanology and Joey Bada$$ and Mayhem Lauren, and buried under a bloated compilation album.
