Max Bell invented astral projection.
Monotone samurai. Ghost Dog decoding the matrix. Chester Watson to the uninitiated, Florida rap wunderkind. Clipped descriptions follow clipped listens. Watson quietly dropped his Summer Mirage EP in June. Six spaced tracks shrouded in blunt smoke and draped in colored armor, rhymes flipped like Ishod Wair flips boards, it was light work for the 18-year-old behind the sprawling twenty-eight tracks of last year’s Tin Wooki.
“Wrath of the Guided” is the first video from the aforementioned EP. The astral drone and warble clips to a metallic clink, the sound of swords once held by decapitated foes hitting the pavement. When Watson raps the truncated becomes fluid, collages appear undivided. His voice deceptively mesmerizes. The lyrics are swift at their most languid, seemingly effortless. His team is first and last, aborted consorts with death and alliterative arrows are respectively sketched and fired in between.
In the video, Watson’s frame is traced and shaded in digitally oscillating black and white. It’s a metaphor if you want it to be. Watch and listen before deciding which pill you’ll swallow, before deciding whether or not you believe in astral projection.
