In the words of Kevin Hart on the JRE podcast when talking about Mike Tyson, ‘He was like a pitbull off a leash with no owner, whose fucking dog is this man?’
In those exact words, I feel about this producer right here, and here’s why. When I reviewed his first few projects earlier in the year, I was no doubt impressed but didn’t know where he would go from there.
Then mid-year comes with releases like ‘10,000 Hours’, and I started to see an evolution I wasn’t expecting and dug with every fibre of my being, but I started to get a small idea of where he would be by the end of the year.
Then THIS COMES OUT, and I’m back to being left dazed and confused. He has come out like Bane, injecting the venom and has broken free of his cage, and we now have an absolute version of this man working on a record with a pair of killers, and they ain’t no League of Assassins, but they’re letting the game know, they’re here to MASSACRE!
This is the brand-new album by Producer Hi-Q! Accompanied by MC’s Dtaylz, The Profit, and Gamblez Tha Lucky Bastard, and together they drop a ruthless 10 tracks with one feature in -Knownaz EVIL, and I’m not kidding when I say this project is MURDEROUS.
We gotta start with that production because to say Hi-Q surprised me on this would be the biggest understatement of the year! He has come back more animalistic and rough and rugged than I could have ever dreamed him to be!
He’s decided in order to create another ‘AOTY’ contender, he had to dig deeper than he’s ever got in his life and make the kind of music robbers pump while putting on the masks! The type of music that penetrates your bones and spikes your blood, making you feel invincible!
Just that intro track alone, holy shit, that combination of that movie clip and that absolutely disgusting beat that turns your insides backwards and forces your inner demon to surface as you end up in a permanent mean mug to the world that ceases to leave even hours after listening to the album!
The whole record is ruthless, cunning, muddy, sharp, unforgiving, and diabolical in every sense of the word. He’s giving the middle finger to the world and leaving all his humanity behind with this record! It’s absolutely ridiculous!
If I had to choose a personal favourite (gun to my head) because they are all incredibly dangerous, I’d have to say ‘Kill Count’ because it has that metal influence with those sharp guitar strings, thick bass, and heavy drums that you can feel in your brain!
This song feels like hatred in sonic form, and after listening to it, I actually felt my mood become more aggressive (doesn’t help I’m listening to this on my lunch breaks), but this has me feeling like it was inspired by bands like ‘Body Count’, and it’s perfect!
If we see Hi evolve any further come December, we are going to get an entity that no one will be able to contain!
Now, to talk about the devils on each of his shoulders doing his bidding on the microphone, they were more than capable of keeping that high energy and dark matter! You couldn’t ask for a more chaotic duo than these two, keeping the mayhem and overall power of the album that gives the listener goosebumps with each word they sprayed onto the album!
Each man had perfect chemistry with the other and spit grim, touchy, and rigid street poetry that was so vivid in execution that you felt like a hopeless bystander teleported into the situations they were describing, and that level of imagery was on a whole new level!
They never let up even once! The whole 30 minutes was filled with just pure, unadulterated hardcore lyricism with a sharp pen game and a flow so heavy and surreal that it felt like ghetto story time being narrated by a pair of villains in the back of a heist van as a side quest right before arriving at the bank!
I’m not joking. This record is beyond phenomenal! It’s so engaging and raw that it makes most other records pale in comparison. Go listen to this album (if you dare).
https://open.spotify.com/album/4Ka9ukD04koNpLR2V7WPPP?si=gcDokHutSC2ReE2yHv2xYQ
The Serpent Tongue Reviews 