Wara From the NBHD's Kidnapped is one of the most visually generous and selectively contemporary albums I've heard in a very long time.  Alongside the project, Wara also presents a gallery that tells the story of "Piano Lessons", the character that this album explores.  Having fully produced and written this album, Wara is able to focus his work around the powerful sounds (discussed in an interview for RESPECT mag) that speak to him so fluidly. GrandeMarshall (of Fool's Gold), Rell, and LIGHTSKINMAC-11 (of Two-9) are the only features on this 11-track album, which is surprisingly long (50 minutes), while being radically cohesive.  

Reigning in highly technical production with historically-evocative lyrics, Wara makes Kidnapped the perfect resumé of talent.  His two-handed control of his project take Wara out of the generic rap conversation, and he takes advantage of his capacity for quality.  He uses a variety of paces, densities, atmospheres, and expressions to develop his Piano Lessons persona.  

Wara rolls these elements through some of raps most engaging eras and sounds.  He draws organic melodies from the depths of the Marcy houses with the expressive chords that anchor N.E.R.D. to Tyler, the Creator.  He gristles subtleties that sweep streets from Queensbridge to the Island of Staten.  And while Wara can reference these eras and contributors, he also includes a variety of highlights, including acid/rock twinges into a few tracks ("Beige" being the strongest example).  His dexterity extends from the most contemporarily-relevant sounds to the distant relatives of those sounds.  He extends his story-telling capabilities through his carefully-defined soundscapes.  

Vibrant Blues progressions weave the grim yarns of a ski-masked lifestyle,  desolate in its listless repetitions.  Curling sharp snares, Piano//Wara enters a jam-band atmosphere to develop "Fuck You Mean/Composure", a split song whose varied facets push one another into stronger position, fold unexpected conflict into his character.  He quickly shifts gears, energizing piano strings with a darkness that could've hosted DMX incantations or Busta Rhymes' amphetamine-flow.  Wara's work splitting songs and merging opaque styles serve to expose the attitude of this album: torment tells the story.  

As a story told by both sound and content, Wara From the NBHD's Kidnapped is one of the most unique contributions to music this year.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

BLEU DOPE's T-BRUIN teams up with Ron Shaw for VI, a six-track collaborative EP between the rapper and producer.  Only GVVAAN NURAS (also of BLEU DOPE), and Ngan features vocals outside of BRUIN and Shaw.  A few of these songs were first performed with a live band, as a part of “The Bruinski Experience”, a series of shows Bruin played this past year with a live band.  Together, Shaw and BRUIN work to create a digestible project built on a steady confidence that holds together a variety of textures and highly-personalized sounds.   

Shaw has worked with Atlanta representatives Key! and Curtis Williams of Two-9.  And while he caries traces of the geography, each track capitalizes on sonic nuances to develop a diversity of genre explorations.  He uses blistering synths to ignite strings, wincing keys to pluck the sensibilities of a deep bass, waxes boom-bap airiness, wavers stretched keys, captures the subtleties of live music with restful subtleties, and irks a flute to tramp around aggressive swipes.  Beneath the surface of each track, Shaw suspends a thoughtfully dense drum swell.  With this substantial motivator, BRUIN maintains his poise over each highly-variant terrain.

BRUIN tells the story a man frantically holding onto his sense of calm.  Rushing to the finish line, careening vivaciously around a romantic expedition, boasting a hearty character to the tune of an Outkast reference, an ode to a special lady, loudly declaring his presence, or he crams a discombobulated peace into sonic dissonance, BRUIN’s systematic blitz retains the force of the tape.  BRUIN stands out as the guiding force for these tracks, constantly pushing his content in order to express distinct attitudes.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Word around town this wasn't supposed to leak.  Young Thug, Freddie Gibbs, and A$AP FERG maneuver "Old English", produced by Salva and Nick Hook.  The trio hasn't made an appearance together ever, and gather the South, Mid West $ide, and the East, respectively.  Collectively, each contributor develops a critical aspect of the silently-exuberant instrumental.

Salva and Hook knead a viscous, churning instrumental that pops aggressive impurities to buckle a flinching unpredictability throughout.   The density drudges through a sharply-curbed drum-bass, ushered away by a twinkling flute and an equally corrosive set of gun shots.  Protruding through this gloss is a hankering for snares and gut-punching synth progressions.  These two treatments give an understated grandiosity to the soundspace, and invite the versatility that Thugger, Gibbs, and FERG break down.  

Surprising as ever, Thugger filters into a hollow strength, and tames his squeaks to an absolute minimum.  With sharp extensions of his own, he matches the flinches in the instrumental.  Gibbs follows full of gruff force, rubber-on-cement-stuttering his footsteps to overcome the gravity that surrounds him.  FERG, on the other hand, channels the pink leather era, frantically burning all stray sounds with an unfocused extravagance.  The tension that Salva and Hook create to drown Thugger, Gibbs, and FERG, emerges with equal force from the vocals.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Gucci Mane and Chief Keef release "Top In The Trash", produced by Mike Will Made It.  The 1017//Glo Gang connection takes on this single as an introduction to Gucci's Trap House 4, set for a release 07.04.14 [this coming Friday].  The pair have worked together on a few tracks before, such as "Darker", "So Much Money", and "No Patience" (alongside OJ Da Juiceman), and take this latest collaboration as an opportunity to work over a playfully haunting piece of production by Mike Will.  

Opening with 8-bit imprecisions, Mike Will offers a disjointed soundspace from the first to the last note.  Momentarily settling down, he drudges around deeper keys, nudging darkness over his scantily-performed 8-bit static.  His metallized bass drum crashes the soundspace, bearing the load left behind by the sharper sounds meant to aggravate an arid atmosphere.  With these conflictingly smooth and abrasive sounds, Mike Will negotiates fault lines into a cohesive, restricted set of asymmetrical sounds.  

Gucci and Keef use this asymmetry to stack gwalla, drink straight out of the bottle, and extend invitations to check out their new gear.  Guwop channels his turnt self, intervening energetically to flexx gains, racks, and overstuffed safes.  Keef ends off with a [mumbled] verse about stunin, killing scenes, and po'in up pints.  Not much surprising going on here in terms of content, but hearing this pair simulate the smooth//abrasive relationship that supports them makes for a satisfying venture into their artistry.  

LISTEN : 

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Long Beach's Boogie finally drops his tape Thirst 48, after building anticipation with "NUMB”//”F.L.I.P.", "Bitter Raps", and "West Side" (alongside A$ton Matthews).  He gathers production from Caleb Stone, Dream Panther, Pyramid Vritra (of Odd Future's Jet Age of Tomorrow as Hal Williams), DK The Punisher, Sweetestlove, Alexander Spit, DezzieGee, TheRealRaw, Qreamybeats, Strider Hiryu, and Beewirks.  Only A$ton Matthews and Epicmustdie feature vocals on the 11-track tape, which formats into a simultaneously digestable and authentically-balanced body of work for Boogie's debut.  

Boogie's comfortable thuggery on Thirst 48 revives the relaxed power of an era built on the efforts of experience.  The hyper-real [read : delusional] character of rap's contemporaries has divorced rappers from the realities that created them (regardless of where they're actually from).  Not Boogie though.  Nothing about committing genocides on the streets of L.A., or selling enough yay to stack a million, or having run through a gang of groupies.  No outrageously-played drums, EDM headaches, or unrecognizable progressions.  

And that's not shade cast on any artist who expresses their work with those tools; it's to say that Boogie's impact comes from his stability as an artist who's ground  the stories he lives to tunes that fluctuate a learned calm.  Thirst 48 reaches an essential portrait of his L.A. truth told through these highly-attainable sounds.  Boogie negotiates his work by calmly grasping the ambience that grew from early Odd Future/Main Attrakionz into a bundle alongside the resonance of DJ Mustard.  Boogie reps his heritage over the alien consonance that arises, finding his way through the inevitable violence of his wherabouts, the irrelevant trivialities of people who front heavily, and absolution for his past.  Boogie doesn't create his character through his music, he explores it in real time in front of his listeners.  

GET THIRST : 

  -CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Levii Ru$$ell cuts his teeth on a Tommy Kruise instrumental for "CRYSTALLINE", after the pair met up at SXSW.  Both artists have full bodies of work coming out soon (TOMMY MCGUIRE and Vi$ionz, respectively), which is a doubly-exciting prospect.  The Houston born-and-bred rapper chooses to work into a much more stable soundspace here, with Tommy Kruise poin' a healthy serving of drawling drums and soothing flashes.  

Tommy Kruise is no foreigner to molasses-driven sounds that fuel slabs around Houston.  He's created an important body of work that moves slowly, and accumulates force through the clarity, density, and depth of his sounds.  And this is no different.  With poignantly-flickered shines prodding metallics and snares shot into solitude, he creates a sharply-extended soundspace.  With few subtleties, Kruise hisses, claps, and quivers sounds effortlessly on the back of a plucked bass.  A majestic voyage calmly exerts itself, and Ru$$ell surges forward.

Never payin for pussy, pullin up, buck-50s, Dhalsim references, bars in Italian, and going to the Poconos with your main ho, Ru$$ell just about covers any category the violence-saturated youth of our generation might mull over.  Usually, Ru$$ell's presence on a track captures his deeply volatile compulsion to be unpredictable.  And while he does maintain his elastic presence on this track, he garners a much more permanent strength by taming some of his more hesitant-to-explosive vacillations.  Ru$$ell steps outside of himself just enough to grow, but not far enough to leave his grit behind.  Loyalty and strength above all, that's Levii Ru$$ell.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

.L.W.H. drops his third [mostly] instrumental mixtape, UNTITLED TAPE 3 (Courageous Celibacy), having composed it in its entirety, calling on Squadda B (of Main Attrakionz) & Moon Ratus for EP input, and ISSUE (of E-40's progeny) for guest vocals.  This is the third in a series of tapes by the Green Ova Records producer (SHOPLIFTER and A.N. 2013 - INFINITY preceded this third, concluding chapter), with each one charting a new iteration of his instrumental dimensions.  A traditionally unlikely character for rap production (both in terms of his passage into rap and his particularly surprising aesthetic), .L.W.H. has made a habit of challenging vocal artists to integrate polyrhythmic soundspaces.  But with no vocals to be spoken of in any meaningful sense here, we're left with an authentic display .L.W.H.'s varied influences that themselves serve to challenge a greater view of auditory aesthetics.

Potentially punk, caustically ambient, and at times traditionally patterned, .L.W.H.'s own musical interests can seem obstructive to one another.   We hear  many artists make claims to certain unexpected interests, but these are often translated only into photo-ops and made-to-customize rapper merch.  Rarely do listeners face an artist whose interests and follow-through carry the process of genre-braiding into their music.   And throughout the seemingly trackless progress of Courageous Celibacy, listeners are invited to do just that.  

A disjointed atmosphere emerges as a result of this invitation, crumbling from each unexpectedly-sealed track.  .L.W.H. doesn't invite us to hear how a vocalist could enter his sounds, nor even does he ask us to peer directly into his agglomeration of influences.  Through his stringed operatics, to flightily-choraled chants, to sharply-curbed stomps, to Texas-drawled pings, to funk-clapping hand drums, to an acid jazz seethe, .L.W.H. embeds his asymmetry.  

But it's not as simple as "Oh look, he makes a lot of different sounds and puts them together on a tape."  Each track, while never resembling the previous one (in terms of sounding similarly), rejects many conceptions of rhythm and composition to an equally challenging  degree.  Here, .L.W.H. scoffs at the way(s) in which compositions develop an idea, focusing on reformatting the comforts listeners often glean from these, all the while forgoing the perils of noise music.  Just as ISSUE's croaks are frazzled into an unrecognizably nightmarish refrain of growls and cobbling drums, so are the blisteringly pacemakered breaths that fluster an ordinarily calm ambience on a preceding track.  

And that's the .L.W.H. experience.  The integration of his abstracted musings work together to challenge the body of musicality that sources each piece, tearing new openings into how these sounds work together.  There's something for nobody [yet].  So everybody should listen.  

                *WARNING this tape ends with an unplugged .L.W.H.*

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Rome Fortune catches the game off guard alongside an exclusively DunDeal-produced tape, Drive, Thighs, & Lies.  On this six track semi-EP, Rome and Dun call up Junglepussy, Relly Jade, PeeWee Longway, ShoMo, and Young Thug.  On every level, this is the type of project more artists need to be putting out.  Focused, digestable, emphatic, and works that display a finely-tuned aura, the pair give us a closely-calculated project.  Airily forceful with mushy accents, Drive, Thighs, & Lies is the grumble that coerces Rome’s branded tautness to the cushions left behind in Dun’s [fairly] raucous sounds.  

DunDeal takes Rome on a slightly-bumpy ride through these six tracks.  He opens with the elasticity of a bounce house, pinging disparate snares, noncommittal keys, and static seethes against a treacherous bass.  This germinates into a choking [PAUSE] attack for the Junglepussy and Relly features; robotic keys gasp as they’re smothered by a barking drum bass. Dun slows things down for “Waterfall”, though, fluting a delicately-erroded series of strings and sampled cries.  And that’s the first half : settled and serene.  ”Move Your Body” begins the more disjointed tracks with a brisk set of modified horns, buckled dribblings, and string-rhythmed metallics.  As I already wrote about the PeeWee feature, Dun cobbles “…shimmers that aggravate strings headfirst into the hollowed ruptures, cleaved by flutes”.  Which finally leaves us with “Smokin Alladin”, that features Young Thug’s tone-dismissing squeaks over an almost-cinematic set of horn jumps, tuned to hollowed bass, wispy protrusions, and a creeping xylophone.  

And in this sea of varied riot, Rome Fortune expresses his force as a scene-setting artist.  Other than Future and Chief Keef, Rome is one of the only artists whose presence is aggressively-affixed to the atmosphere of his sounds.  In no way does Rome sound like either Future or Keef, but his positioning on songs as an instrument for a completed atmosphere is undeniably powerful in some key ways.  And this project might be the best example from Rome’s repertoire.  Occasionally parallel to the calm around him, occasionally equalizing a volatile soundspace, Rome finesses the strength of his aesthetic choices.  In either case, Rome throttles his atmosphere with both hands, serving listeners with a full plate, six-course meal.  And while you could enter Rome into the “Oh but is he lyrical though??” conversation, his organic poise on tracks removes him from the question in a unique way.  

And that’s rap progress from Rome Fortune.  

STREAM/DOWNLOAD : 

  -CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Rome Fortune calls up PeeWee Longway to bless a DunDeal-produced track entitled “Get That”.  Full disclosure, I’m partial to the track in large part because I did the original artwork for the track [above].  But whatever.  Branded as #FingerPop, Fortune and PeeWee experiment on this single, forcefully mounting production whose lightly-grazing subtleties churn the prodded depth of a bass//runoff rumble.

DunDeal serves a tall double cup, thick with a syrupy bass, lightly-dosed with fluted mollies, disorienting xannie strings, and blinding oxy shimmers. Each sound tumbles around, amplifying these deflated sounds with the muted rattle of an overwhelming bass.  The result is a sun-bleached high, brightly-piquing listeners’ relaxation to the tune of shimmers that aggravate strings headfirst into the hollowed ruptures, cleaved by flutes.  And under this addled supervision, Rome Fortune and PeeWee Longway collect stacks on racks on gucci backpacks.

Both artists had to adapt to this raspily-textured production.  Rome Fortune just dropped Beautiful Pimp II, a hyphy-inspired tape that softly weaves through depleted sounds.  PeeWee Longway, on the other hand,  is more adept in the art of geeked-up aggression.  For this effort together, both artists had to explore unfamiliar territory.  Rome’s usual diffusion is replaced with a buckling aversion to sonic dispersion.  He stirs a groaning verse to embalm the track with his corrosive calm.  Longway follows up, matching the sputtering snare, exhaling his blitzing energy into a relaxed presence here.  Starting at two distant ends, both Rome and Longway manage to pilot themselves over a tensely-cooled track.  

  -CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Tommy Kruise remixes Ballout, Yung Gleesh, and Capo's “What U Got”, originally produced by Zaytoven.  Check out the original, in all of its geeked hesitance, right here.  Kruise has spent a significant amount of time amplifying the work(s) of others, constructing his  vision of hits that range from Quebecer Rap to soulful reappropriations to saddened reimaginations.  Regardless, it’s hard to genre-type what Kruise does in general.  It’s probably hard to do that in general, and I’m tired of trying to understand rap in terms of genre splicing.  

And to be honest, it’s sounds like this one that make that conversation obsolete.  Here, where Zay left trails of sunctioned hyphy functions, Kruise propels a swollen anxiety.  He forgets genre in the interest of character.  You could hear the different genres//sounds that source Kruise’s work, but their collision(s) is[are] what defy the idea of genre at all. here.  By droplet-maneuvering metallic percussions, exasperating snare knocks, and thumbing a flatlined bass, Kruise creeps his sound into existence.  He validates Ballout, Gleesh, and Capo alongside these daunting sounds, without having to weave a mashup.  

Kruise affixes a new atmosphere for the track, bringing the trio out of a genre conversation, and into one that understands rap as a raw state of being.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

T-BRUIN releases visuals by GIL-TA for his song "Bout That Life", featuring DAMONE, which was produced by KTGOTBEATS.  I got the chance to  go behind the scenes for this hood-driven "arms race", which spurred material that I'll share next week.  BRUIN and the BLEU DOPE collective (which includes GIL-TA) linked with DAMONE and his ROSE GOLD crew to depict the precarious nature of connections made and lost.  Under the careful eye of GIL-TA, the story's carefully-balanced persona takes form.  

KT's instrumental flitters on the backs of margin-piercing sounds, nodding a sturdy aggregate off of these seemingly frail sounds.  With a hum railing off the edges of the track, KT builds from a deeply threatening place.  He peaks his structure with minimally-amplified acoustics: rolling strings flutter over a stew of shouldering vocal samples and a deep knock that cements these thinned sounds.  By combining a series of [separately] frail sounds under a a broad bass, KT constructs the strength of street wisdom : power in numbers, so stick together.  

Following in line, the BLEU DOPE collective and ROSE GOLD family come together under BRUIN and DAMONE's vocal directions.  As told by this video, warring factions express their colors to tell a story of deceit and conflict.  BRUIN opens with a short parable to introduce the aggressively-hammered hook and his nonchalantly boisterous verse.  DAMONE's uncontrollably arid rasps infect the rest of the scene, answering BRUIN's taunts with an equal degree of thuggery and shruggery.  No fucks given, if you bout that life, then be bout it.  If not, shut the fuck up about your colors and your set.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Noreaga, of CNN (Capone N Noreaga) teams up with Harry Fraud for “Cowboys And Indians”.  Noreaga’s upcoming project, Noreaster is set to drop 4.20.14, and will feature contributions from Styles P, Raekwon, Troy Ave, Cormega, Capone, GoodBelt Gang, Yung Reallie, Sho Ballotti, and Nature.  Just add a feature from Lake, and this project would’ve assembled [most of] the finest from street-certified music.  And Harry Fraud follows suit, capturing the Queensbridge aesthetic, leaving the snares at home for a dark growl that Noreaga laces with taunting chin-checks.  

Fraud lays urban stripes down with a gritty synth set to hunt down cinematic shimmers and  acoustic sounds that affirm the uncompromising strength of the Militainment camp.  Drums open with heartbeaten rhythm, settling a warzoned environment.  Wavering on the deeper end of tones, the disappointed synth droops hoodies under the vanson leathers that Fraud evokes with his darkened//tech//bop.  Perfect for the confrontational pressin from Noreaga, Fraud clouds his sounds with threatening density.  

HASHTAG FACTS just got a reboot from the CNN representative (Fuck All Cats That Snitch) for anyone considering pointing fingers.  Noreaga is relevant without a trending topic, a branded movement, or a design team. You know, real rap shit.  His material revolves around doing your time, weeding out rats, and how to not get sold out.  And while Noreaga has been experimenting with his sounds for a while, he never strays from the roots of his experience(s), focusing and refreshing his presentation at unpredictable times.  

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Boogie teams up with A$ton Matthews over a Caleb Stone instrumental, for an all-Left Coa$t cast on "West Side".  Boogie's project Thirst 48, is still set for an unknown release date, but all of his contributions so far have retained an unwaveringly distinct street monologue.  Using Matthews' signature ferocity over an inflating instrumental by Stone, Boogie develops an even tone for his coarse subject matter.   

Caleb Stone has an enormous bag of tricks that bulges with unconventional song-structures, boisterous remixes, and floated atmospheres.  Here, he floats a snare-stirred instrumental atop a crumpling//kneaded swell.  Occasionally removing the penetrable elements of his instrumental, Stone flushes poignant sounds to dagger in an increasingly-loose environment.  The dilating consistency in his instrumental gives Boogie and Matthews the ebb and flow they need to balance the textures on this track.  

And let's just praise the fact  that there's still a few rappers out rep colors.  Boogie sticks to his red bandana, all the while acknowledging that most of his people twist C's into their fingers.  People forgot that the streets govern; and that the hood decides who really got the grammy, and whose mixtape actually flopped.  Boogie and Matthews remain undaunted in their distinct presences here.  Boogie opens with not actin' sweet, harmonizing about whoopin' asses, and playing on words to accuse cops of miranda rights-illiteracy.  Matthews follows up with his scream-adjacent flow to speak on comin' at the neck, never missin', and puttin' in work.  One part calm threats, and one part aggressive enunciations, "West Side" captures the facets of street authenticity.  

WHERE YOU FROM [?] : 

Boogie - Westside (Prod. By Caleb Stone)

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

T-BRUIN at Lit Lounge, NYC, winter 2014.

Shot with a disposable camera.  [unedited]

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

Fred Pharaoh and  SYNEAD out in the BRONX, NY, winter 2014.  

Shot with a disposable camera.  [unedited]

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

GVVAAN NÜRAS in the BRONX, NYC, winter 2014 (2/2).  

Shot with a disposable camera.  [unedited]

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)

T-BRUIN in the BRONX, NYC, winter 2014.

Shot with a disposable camera.  [unedited]

-CUTT CZAR (HERONALD REAGAN)