(Up the Block)

I swear at this point, Flames Dot is my hip-hop adrenaline rush for 2025. With every new drop, I get more excited than I did over the one previous!

But here we are again, Flame Dot Malik with his 5th EP of 2025. Let that sink in real quick; we aren’t even in fucking April yet! Which means this is his 5th in 3 months. Absolutely insane work ethic and consistency that rivals no other right now. I think the only cats who have made similar numbers are the Penlordz crew, but that’s as a crew, not as an individual. So in that respect, Flames Dot is king this year!

This project has 8 tracks and 21 minutes. One feature with Fuego Base; the rest is just producer El Camino and Flames! Together, they dominate this EP with hardcore east coast grime energy that rivals anyone else doing the same right now!

The production is so fucking hard it’s crazy. How he can switch between gruelling, cold-blooded tracks like ‘Wire Taps’, which stars the whole record off, to soft, smooth instrumentals such as ‘Up The Block’ with those melodic female vocals one up front in that chipmunk voice pitch and another choir style in the back of the beat to make this angelic-sounding track that sounds soothing as hell!

The fact that El has the ability to switch the tone and tempo on a dime is crazy. He doesn’t have to stay confined to one specific sound and brings versatility and passion to the instrumentals that only he can bring!

As per usual, and has been the case for the last 4x projects! (Still insane to say that), but he’s back with his same raw, crisp, and violent tones that make him always sound like he’s 0.001% away from snapping and somehow crawling through your headphones or phone speaker and hitting you over the head with a Hennessy bottle, and honestly, as scary as an image as that would be, it’s what separates him from everyone else going right now!

He’s inserted himself in the same category as other monsters like 

-Bub Styles

-Mondo Slade

-Pro Dillinger

These guys plus Flame Dot are the real hip-hop MONSTARS; they are the 4 pillars of that underground rough and tumble rap shit that keeps that aggressive energy and attitude alive, and I hope Flames never changes his ways on the mic!

5 out of 5. Literally, no one else is doing the same this year, and I don’t expect him to slow down, so who knows what the limit is for him, but I sure as hell know it ain’t 5! 

https://open.spotify.com/album/1mGwDCAo4SwfBSmK5lW28r?si=pW5I-D2MQ52410-YNNXCLQ

(Donation link below)

https://www.paypal.me/Corbz94?locale.x=en_AU