Don’t Maximize Your Rap Album

Years ago I was spending some time with DJ Abilities and Eyedea when they were working on making their record E&A (humble brag). One thing Abilities said during the hang was “one thing I can tell you, there will never be four bars on the record that are the exact same as the four bars right before it. Even if it’s just a little shaker or an extra clap, they’ll be something special”. At the time I half thought it was cool, and half thought was a dumb rule to enforce for a record. What if the perfect thing to have happen in the next four bars of music is exactly the fuck what happened in the four bars prior? All music is built on repetition. Black music is uniquely connected to the magic of repetition. I remember really early in my college career reading this statement about African music which I will now paraphrase: the fourth time a pattern happens is different from the fifth time that pattern happens. Repeating is as much a development as a variation is. It stuck with me. Repeating can be the wrong choice, but it’s a choice, it’s a valid choice. It’s frequently the best choice. A record that arbitrarily decides to add something unique to every four bars is unlikely to be an enjoyable listen. Now actually, that E&A record must have some moments where the beat just rides, and a lot of the record is really enjoyable. Especially this one.

But I think too much of that micro-producing impulse can absolutely derail a project, it can absolutely derail a band, hell, I think it can absolutely derail a scene/genre. And that brings me to what I’m really here to talk about: EARTHGANG.

I bought all the Earthgang stock back in 2018. On March 18, 2018 went to the Entry to see J.I.D. while also catching Vince Staples at the Mainroom (that’s one of the best two for one show hits in Minnesota history). I walked into the Entry during Earthgang’s set and I had no idea who they were (I hadn’t done the necessary homework to realize they were on one of my favorite J.I.D. songs). But anyway, the energy they exuded on stage was absolutely amazing. They were full of energy but not shoving their shit down your throat. They weren’t sacrificing their delivery to be energetic. And suddenly I found myself doing shit I hadn’t done for a band in a long time, I was looking at their website everyday. I was going down the deepest of rabbit holes with them. I was loving their music. I knew they were down with J. Cole who I also loved, but I was getting something from Earthgang in particular that I wasn’t getting from any other rap group. Their newest release in 2018 was an EP called Royalty. This is an amazing EP. This EP seems to relish in the fun of making music. This is some major projecting but I think that Earthgang knew that the big moments of stardom were coming. Soon they’d be signed to Interscope, soon they’d be out on the road opening for Billie Eilish. Soon every song would be an investment, a board meeting, something that required visuals, something where the beat changes every four bars. What I hear on Royalty is the tangible joy of creation without micromanagement. Ever since I started rooting for Earthgang, I started getting disappointed by their output. They are still an incredibly talented crew, but I don’t rock with them like I did. Nowadays on an Earthgang album everything that can be sung is harmonized, every reference is underlined, none of the ad-libs are actually ad-libbed. It all just feels so. . .efficient. I can’t rock with it. I can rock with Royalty and I fear that some of rap is losing that angle. I know my group, Heiruspecs, can easily lose that angle. When we had the most riding on our success, when this band was our livelihood, we still put a song on our record where the outro was ME singing “I am Willy Wonka from the Chocolate Factory, would you like a piece of chocolate taste from me”. (listen at 2:58). There’s something about being young and trying to make each other laugh, trying to make everyone in the studio smile. That’s a good metric, that’s a good way to make magic. You’ll make some stupid shit, but it’s that beautiful inefficiency of lightly produced music. We don’t need to explain every decision, we don’t need to belabor every drum fill. With a comedian, I want to see them take EVERY SINGLE angle of a joke, drain every bit of juice from that fruit. I want the opposite in rap; leave it vague, hint at it, let the potential float there. The undisputed kings of unmaximized rap is De La Soul. And I know that’s wild to say, because it’s well documented how hard Prince Paul and De La worked on those first handful of records. But what stands out to me is a willingness to allow things that are unexplainably dope to make the final cut even though there’s no way to explain their greatness individually, they are just collectively the chunks of a masterpiece. Listen to the song Eye Patch. Let’s do that together.

Weird things about this song:

There’s a chorus but it only happens at the beginning
They just take a nice two measure breather between Posdnous and Dave’s first two verses
Posdnous opens his second verse with a dotted half note of just saying “mmmmmm”

It’s so CRAFTY. So capricious. So inefficient, so unique. So singular. Let’s not lose that shit. For me, Earthgang has lost that, there’s nothing tossed off, there’s nothing improvisatory. It’s all too serious. But let me know play you some of my favorite Earthgang jams.

Weird Things About This Song:

This song features a handful of lyricists trying to explain what factors will go into their decisions regarding purchasing a vehicle.

The intro patiently develops and when the lyrics start, an amazing new guitar part is introduced, unexpected magic

Johnny Venus refers to his house getting robbed in this line “came home, only thing they left us was the ceilings” what a way to say that
I also love the image of selling waters for a dollar and being embarrassed about the prospect of your family finding out

Doctor Dot’s verse is perfection. His exploration about buying a car involves wanting to measure up better against compared to one of his relatives. It’s a simple feeling, it’s relatable, but he delivers it with so much specificity and craftiness.

Weird things about this song:
It’s just one thing, it’s the space Doctur Dot spans across two short verses. It comes off as so loose, so stream of consciousness. Clearly this is a very talented rapper but this sounds like someone who has developed the technical facility to make it sound like it’s second nature. In verse two he is cataloging a set of anonymous sexual adventures with women on the road and then just juts over to a tale of a close friend dying in a hospital. It doesn’t work on paper. But listen, it works. It can’t be edited, it can’t be double tracked, it can’t be workshopped. It just must be.

Weird Things About this Song:
What the hell is happening with the keyboard? It sounds like the keyboard is the sound of someone writing a keyboard part in real time. That’s what makes it so amazing, it sounds so curious and responsive. I don’t believe it ever really loops up, I believe it’s mostly performed live, with such a great interplay to the lyrics.
The first verse from Doctur Dot is utter joy, the bouncing of the lyrics with the reference to J.I.D. and Weezy. It’s that friendly reminder that rapping over a beat can be unimaginably fun. And to close a verse with this “hands free, don’t say shit to me about the penmanship, had the backwoods rolled before I finished this, still it’s this”
Also a great “how bout we put the bassline through a flanger before the outro cause why not”

Closing thoughts: Don’t let rap get perfect! Don’t let rap get micromanaged! Keep the slack, keep the skits, make the masterpieces, don’t utilize every opportunity, throw in some surprises, throw in something that doesn’t make sense until it does, let a groove loop for a long ass time sometimes.