If $ilk is a bowling ball crashing his way through these hallucinogen-laced thoughts, then Harlem-born producer and longtime collaborator Kahlil Blu is the bumper keeping him from sliding into the gutter. Blu produced all of Imma Just Drop, and his beats match the hectic variety of $ilk’s raps with outsized flair. “I Ate 14gs of Mushrooms” and “Cuummoney Amiliani” blend hazy sample work with crystal-clear drums and synths to compound two different but equally epic sounds into psychedelic rocket fuel. “One Glazed” lets a guitar lick simmer in the background of what sounds like 808 Mafia trying their hand at drum’n’bass. “A Visit From the Giant Portal Wizard Snake” and “Jodi Don’t Love Me No Mo :-(” settle into intoxicating sampled chops and loops, while “Emmm, Nigga You Is Tasty >:)” turns a whir of sampled hand drums and flutes into an audible seance. Both Blu and $ilk are at their most uninhibited on “Tasty,” $ilk’s growing anger over connections between slavery, the music industry, and Black death dovetailing perfectly with the syncopated madness of Blu’s sample. No matter what he’s served, $ilk never trips up, barreling through every beat with purpose.
$ilk is living through the same disheveled, surreally racist society as the rest of us, and the emphasis he places on rapping his way through the madness is jaw-dropping. Wordy, thoughtful raps have thrived over the last decade, but they rarely feel this urgent or wired, as though he were snapping out of a drug-induced dream and trying to commit it all to paper before it fades from memory. $ilk has nothing but contempt for the rap industry at large, but he still cares deeply about craft and intent. He says as much on the second half of “One Glazed,” where he raps that putting all his competitors on notice is his duty: “This a hard task but it came with a tool, like a hard hat/It’s all facts; you ain’t slept on, lil nigga, your fuckin’ song’s wack!”
Structurally, Imma Just Drop isn’t much different from $ilk’s earlier projects, like 2019’s equally wildly titled G.T.F.O.M.D: There’s Not Enough Room for All You Motha Fuckas to Be On It Like This or 2020’s Attack of the Future Shocked, Flesh Covered, Meatbags of the 85. But Imma Just Drop is looser and burns more intensely, pressing $ilk’s love for pop-culture references, Black self-actualization, and blunted conversations with floating planet chunks into a tab of potent rap music—and rap is just his side gig. As long as the music hits like this—and is willing to rip listeners out of their chairs and punt their brains across the room—there’s really no reason to fix what isn’t broken.
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Tagged: Alternative Music, music blog