I think a big part of the reason that hip hop is a preferable genre name than rap music is that it covers all the pillars of the genre and culture, rather than just the vocals. To call it rap music is to do a disservice to the beats, and when listening to Yesterday's Blues | Tomorrow's ZOOZ, which is absolutely caked with scratching, vocal cuts, and old movie samples. It makes the music immediately electrifying, and gives the vocals something to bounce off.
I previously reviewed GENERIK's album, ANYTHING BUT, and I quite liked it, but at risk of spoiling this review, Yesterdays' Blues blows it out of the water. This is eight tracks of all killer, no filler. From the moment it opens with Red Shade's bendy Western sample, to the choppy boom bap of Johnny Darko vs Holigrambino, GENERIK's flow is on top form. At any given moment, there's something interesting going on, a beat is switching up, a new sample is dropped, the vocals are cut up, something. And all of this with that warm crackly vinyl sound that you associate with hip hop's golden age.
There's dynamics here, too. One moment you're listening to Hourglass House, an almost heavily sounding track with its wobbly choirs and twinkling vibraphones, and then it's immediately followed by Overlook Hotel, a properly Halloweeny track with aggressive scratching and the warb-warb-warb of a muted trumpet like something from an old Betty Boop cartoon. That one is great, I love it. I could talk for ages about that track alone, the spooky xylophone and 6/8 beat switch up, if you listen to one track on this album you gotta make sure it's that one.
I haven't even spoken about the rapping, really. What I get from this album that I didn't get so much from ANYTHING BUT is that GENERIK is a really fantastic rapper. Not just in terms of his flow but his rhymes, too. It sounds almost effortless. Do I know what the songs are about? I could probably figure it out if I studied the lyrics with a magnifying glass, but I get so caught up enjoying the way everything sounds that I get distracted.
I love this album, and I'd recommend it to basically anyone.
