The day has finally come! For one of the most anticipated drops of the year. This man who swept over everyone in 2024 is finally back with his first offering of 2025, and the culture better watch out! Because he’s here to take bodies!
This is the latest EP by Umbrella’s own Substance810. This time around, he’s working alongside producer Haas Almahadi, and together they drop six brand-new tracks featuring
-D-Styles
-Philmore Greene
-Waterr
-DJ Rhettmatic
-Big Trip
-The Bad Seed
-M.A.V
-Jamil Honesty
And I’m going to put my reputation on the line to say this could very well be the hardest 20 minutes you’ll hear all year! This shit goes HARD!
Even though it’s only six tracks, this album features some of the most beautifully crafted, precise, and hard-hitting hip-hop going! Each song consists of a variety of different instruments that help elevate the tracks themselves!
For example, the track ‘A Time For War’ with those classical-inspired strings that sound like something ripped straight from an orchestra! That combined with those thunderous drum patterns makes for the kind of score you’d expect Godzilla to come out to before he destroys a town! Absolutely monstrous!
We have the track ‘Death Blows’, which, as I explained in my singles review, has that 90’s-flavoured cut and scratches combined with that hard exterior East Coast vibe that in your face, fuck your life type instrumental!
We even have the track ‘Be Like Water’ (which, in my opinion, would have been the perfect track to have the MC Waterr on) but has that tranquil, harmonic sound of what sounds like a flute note looping across the beat that’s wrapped around that skeletal boom bap production!
Every track on here instrumentally is a hit! 20 minutes and not one millisecond was wasted! The man Haas definitely cooked up a gem on these beats!
Now, as the rapping goes. Here’s something I can say with 100% confidence because earlier this year or last year I listened to each and every Substance810 album from ground up! So I can say he’s never made a wack project and he didn’t start here!
In this project, he sounds as hungry and as confident as he ever has. He took a long break after last year and that served him well because he’s back, sharper, deadlier and more precise and lethal than we’ve heard him yet!
He brings his trademark swagger to the bars, his strong lyricism and vocabulary across these six tracks is legendary. He has that confidence studio cadence that veteran experience and the prestige of being under the umbrella. He’s been a lyrical threat since day one and that fact has only increased tenfold over the past few years!
Across this album he comes equipped with some of the industry’s heavy hitters! He’s always surrounding himself with industry leaders and today the kings are in-house! Each man absolutely destroys the track they are on, I always love hearing my main man The Bad Seed as well as the legend Waterr and Philmore Greene on the same track!
This ridiculously star-studded EP is everything I expected and more! Banger after fucking banger and it’s the perfect debut project for Substance! I hope we can hear more gems from him before the year is done!
https://open.spotify.com/album/0bBMhswlEhZ2CNbeXT6yVR?si=mptjPv-TTZyo2QTSHX1ugQ
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