Well, I had no idea what to expect from this track, but it definitely wasn’t this. This is an artist I first discovered yesterday, as he produced a track for FAWKEM, and now he’s showcasing his own stuff, and so let’s talk about it!
This is the brand-new single by rapper, producer .Tetsuo, and on the track, it’s 3 minutes and 41 seconds, and believe it or not, it actually samples a fucking Christmas song.
I didn’t even think this could be possible until today, but for real, this whole song (beat and all) is just a classical piece that sounds like a 1980s Christmas song with those luscious, dreamy horns and beautiful keys and all, but played on loop with the male vocal snippet on loop. There’s no actual hip-hop element to the instrumental; it’s literally just a sample on loop, which is fucking impressive.
This is some West Side Gunn-level engineering. But ironically, the one song this reminds me of is the Kanye and Kid Cudi track ‘4th Dimension,’ how that track begins with that old-school tune but then evolves into that experimental rap beat.
The difference there is that it actually does evolve into a hip-hop beat. This one just remains a loop, kind of like WSG’s song ‘RIP Bergdorf,’ how it’s nothing but a sample loop.
Regardless of that incredibly unique production, we have the man himself who raps his ass off over this beat. He has a very fast and chaotic style to his verses. It kind of reminds me of an early Tyler, the Creator in its messy yet unpredictable way of rapping (imagine Bastard/Goblin Era Tyler but sped up).
There’s no pause in his rhythm or wordplay across this song. It’s all just fast-paced, fluent, and lethal pen game.
I will say I wish there was some sort of structure between the words. Instead of being one big, long verse, I feel this cut up into one or two verses and slowed down so that the audience can hear his lyrics more clearly. Plus, I feel it would benefit that gorgeous production more to have a more methodical pacing. But that’s just me; maybe my brain is just too slow to catch the words, but besides that fact, it’s a dope track regardless!
Yeah, in conclusion. Although I would have preferred a bit more ‘slower’ rendering of the vocal performances, the actual rapping was dope and so was the production, so that shouldn’t detour anyone from checking this one out!
The Serpent Tongue Reviews 