HallofFamer

BREAKING 

MY REVIEW OF THE OUTFIT, TX’s DEEP ELLUM (EP)

Following the successful debut of Local Over Everything season three, I retired to my personal retreat in Denton, TX where I spent the following two days as I typically do when afforded the occasional sabbatical: laid up beneath my old lady.

Today, I board the A-Train en route to Dallas to prepare for the next three days of work, which include bar tending at the neighborhood bar where I’m currently employed, working this year’s KIXPO at the Bomb Factory and, more immediately, a cameo on Live From The Underground, Dallas’ premiere hip-hop podcast. I’m certain that a significant portion of today’s program will be dedicated to the increasingly productive Dallas rap trio, The Outfit TX’s latest release: “Deep Ellum (EP),” made available via soundcloud on July 14. I missed the press release and/or general murmur of its official drop date given the anticipation of my own endeavors.

So in advance, I ask that my unpunctuality be forgiven. I made my initial attempt at a listen while parlaying with my old lady in the Little D but the guttural mantra of Outfit member Mel’s “I don’t know about y'all but I’m on them hoes,” didn’t seem appropriate in the presence of someone to whom I maintain romantic exclusivity.

So here I am, on the path back to Dallas, my head and neck spasmodically nodding to The Outfit TX’s eight shamelessly ghetto anthems. Immediately, the Holy Hood Trinity set the pace with the type of inner city intimidation that forces the less-melanated of us retreating to the opposite side of the street with the synth and bass-led single, “Whatcha Mean,” featuring burgeoning Dallas underground staples K. Vation and Crit Morris. The following 28 or so minutes never let up.

Imagine finding yourself in the most despondent parts of Pleasant Grove, South Dallas, Oakcliff and West Dallas - all at once. Now imagine the residents of those neighborhoods’ project buildings, government housings and trap houses, numbering in the thousands, encircling you tightly, back pinned to one of those neighborhoods’ many dead ends, around roughly 3AM.

Imagine that the three leading the slow encroachment towards you are the bejeweled and gold-toothed, tattooed and often shirtless members of the Outfit TX, glaring menacingly and bopping to the deep, nightmarish rhythms that only suit 12", 15" woofers encapsulated by steel-bodied 70’s American muscle cars with a purr like the King of the African Serengeti.

Imagine that, with no intention to enact physical harm upon you, these three bop closer and closer into your personal space, surrounded by the inhabitants of every hood in Dallas, eyes locked into yours, kicking their syrupy game that often goes from a whisper’s audibility to an enraged exhalation, sentiments like: “I know OG’s in the hood that done had it/I know real niggas in the hood that never ratted,” and “We don’t give a fuck about a nigga on that fuckshit/If a nigga get to bucking, we get to rushing.” Imagine how terrifying and fascinating this exchange would be - an all-encompassing display of the hardcore braggadocio that accompanies the dismal and celebratory of the darker parts of Dallas, Texas.

This is Deep Ellum (EP) in a nutshell. The Outfit’s consistent sonic aesthetic drops the listener deep into the pits of every song’s context. Songs like “Wiggin’ Out” that features street-smash “Johnny Cage”-author, G.U.N., induces a sort of schizophrenic psychosis on the listener, to the point where you begin to question your own sanity, jigging to the spacey backdrop laid against the jagged trap drums and bold exclamations of “We don’t give no fucks.” While songs like “On The Cool” featuring Kissed Killed, a young artist whose skill set is too vast and alien to be labeled as simply a rapper, reek of weed smoke and a kind of slow-moving cool that most of us wished we could utilize as effectively as Mel, Dorian and Jay Hawk.

As I travel further into Dallas, an hour and some change south of my starting point, and the pantheon of Dallas’ glorious skyline becomes more and more visible, The Outfit TX’s latest drop seems to be the perfect manuscript of what’s little known about our city from the outside looking in. Glitz and dollar signs aside, much of Dallas is underground, thriving against social and circumstantial odds in a bass-laden, slow-moving confidence that both intimidates and possesses the observer. And as Outfit, TX slick-talker, Mel put it in the K. Vation and Ea$e-assisted “Dallas, Flexxxas,” “We flexed up down here, baby. We next up down here, baby. On fire like it’s goddamn NBA Jam or some shit.”

Already.

Nature Nate x Campion Bond “D.A.B.”

#DallasAndBeyond