Nekomimi + Fony Wallace - PR0JECT NEK0

I still listen to the radio. One thing that's always troubled me, yet seemed appropriate given my overall impression of eastern Long Island, is that the farther you go, the less rap music you hear over the airwaves. (Peace to WUSB; this one isn't for you.) Head east enough and the closest you get to regular rap rotation is 106.1 WBLI. For those who've never been, that's a pop music radio station through and through. And by "pop music," I mean the most viral video-ready, Ariana Grande adjacent glossy bubblegum teen club bangers you've ever heard in your life. PR0JECT NEK0 is to WBLI as all the music on this website is to Hot 97, WBLS, and the rest. That's no shade. 

OK, it's some shade, but it's also saying it's only a matter of time before Fony Wallace is one of those millionaire producer bros accepting delivery of Diamond plaques at Miami mansions, anime inspo flashing neon daydreams in the background. The perfect soundtrack for dumpster diving outlet stores:

R.I.P. GM Web D aka X-Ray da Mindbenda aka King Cesar, a Long Island hip-hop institution unto himself

Raymond Davis, better known as Web D, X-Ray, or King Cesar, passed away earlier this month. No details about his death have been made public as far as I can tell. To say the least, his absence is a major loss not only for Long Island rap, but the greater global hip-hop community. 

The fact that Davis was known by three monikers, each with its own discography, only hints at the breadth of his impact. To many, he's best known for his connections with MF DOOM through Operation: Doomsday and the Monsta Island Czars. Lesser known is the fact that DOOM's first single was "recorded & mixed at Web's crib" (as per the center label), or that he served as a mentor to both DOOM and Subroc.

Even lesser known is the fact that Web D had groups called the East Side 5 and the Players Club running around Long Beach and WBAU in the early 1980s, or that he went to high school with Rick Rubin and sold him a mixer at one point. Think about this. When Rick Rubin was in high school, he was a punk rocker. Conceivably, Web D was one of the first people making rap music in Rick Rubin's vicinity. The same Rick Rubin went on to co-found Def Jam, produce some of Run DMC and LL Cool J's biggest hits, and thereby help bring rap music to the masses. Apocrypha or not, let that marinate.

I never met Ray in person, but he'd reached out to me online to premiere two King Cesar videos in 2016, and the "Bloody Knuckles" post remains one of the 10 most viewed in this site's history. Tragically, three of the four artists involved in that song are now gone. I was able to get back in contact with Ray through Dope Folks Records in 2020. He and Kevroc were kind enough to get on the phone with me for 52 minutes during the early days of lockdown. It's one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. Trust that if I'd known at the time about the Players Club or the Rick Rubin connections, I would've stretched the call well past an hour. 

Ray Davis was a true original. It’s hard to define his sound because as a producer, he was able to flip so many different styles, and his influence, even if unrecognized, filtered down to so many other artists. Raw, massive, funky, cinematic, his beats were like themes for drive-in movie concession stands operating out of time, selling exotic hybrids not yet crossed. 

He was one-half of Darc Mind, the best rapper-producer duo your friends, who listen to hip-hop but don't obsess over it the way you do, have never heard of. Fix that. Don’t let his music die with him.

  

Blaq Kush - There's Always Hope Vol.5

When a need for mind-numbing television and love of rap collide, Rhythm & Flow offers a new appreciation for memorable punchlines, especially those that arrive early. Blaq Kush answers the call with "The smoke in the room got it looking like the first level on Silent Hill." And levels there are. To begin, Silent Hill puts the gamer in the role of a father searching for his vanished daughter. The end is what you make it. With There's Always Hope volumes, we track the cover girl's expressions from shock through derangement to trauma and then watch (blankly?) as each vanishes, leaving her face as featureless as the projects themselves. You'll wish you hadn't learned where she's from. I never beat Silent Hill. Instead, I unlocked a glitch that made any kind of resolution, however disappointing, impossible. I'm writing this off the first 14 seconds of Vol.5's first song. It's also a weed rap. 

5 favorite lines from Skeleton Key

1. "I run NYC to burn calories."

2. "Vulgar like a Russian soldier but much colder."

3. "I'm a wolf. I'm aloof. I'm not cool despite what you might've assumed."

4. "These whores made voodoo dolls out the hairs of my pubis fallen from my two balls."

5. "How you get to look devilish but angelic / With my ancestors in heaven when I made man in my image / But all n*ggas ain't handsome just to be fair to the women / Up here where the air is thinner ain't no weird n*ggas or square bitches here to irritate my spirit / I'm busy creating pyramids." 

Skirt steak.

Blu Warta - Original Rugged Authentic

What's it called when you're so of something that it's as much a part of you as you are of it? As far I can tell, that was Blu Warta's relationship with hip-hop. This mixtape's title speaks to that. Coopting commercial jingles and tags was a fundamental component of the first raps, even pre-dating the phrase hip-hop. Before the orders come the advertisements. In the '80s, nobody beat the Biz. In the '90s, the Indelible MCs got their name off a marker. And in the '00s, Blu Warta lifted the title for this Smooth Denali-hosted mixtape from the only footwear arguably more synonymous with hip-hop than Adidas shell toes and Clarks Wallabees. Sadly, Warta passed away in 2005. Twenty years on, there are a number of tributes floating around. What there isn't is anything like a complete discography. So, clocking in at over 40 minutes, Original Rugged Authentic is the most comprehensive review of Blu Warta's music currently available. No false advertising, it is as described.

 

Skyzoo - "Courtesy Call" ft. Chuck D

If I can be honest with you, this post is as much an excuse to get Skyzoo on the site as it is anything else. At this point, I'm very comfortable saying he's one of the most underappreciated rappers of our generation. I remember once reading about Cage that he found himself considered too thugged out for indy rap and too intelligent for the mainstream. If Skyzoo is in a similar position, he's taken the opportunity to ghostwrite for majors while moonlighting as the one of the best rappers alive. (Hear: In Celebration of Us, All the Brilliant Things, The Mind of a Saint, and now Keep Me Company.) It's too bad the only other site I want to write for doesn't want to publish a Skyzoo interview. (Direct all hate mail here.)

516reapa - The New Prodigy

The future of music has arrived. If rap is at its best unfiltered human expression, then here it is in distillate. Have you ever seen a rapper take over a cipher without lyrics? I don't mean to say that they have wack rhymes. I mean that they may not be saying words at all. 516reapa brings that energy to every song. He also may be rapping in another language occasionally. I'm not really sure, and for that matter, I'm not really sure if it matters. For the past month or so, he was dropping music at the breakneck pace of about an album a day. That suddenly stopped, he's taken down much of his recent material, and there's still a ton! Again, I'm not sure any of this matters. For example, all that remains of recent standout TBS•••BLACKPOWERS are the following words: 

"*a righteous term for the keys of mastering neurodivergence, particularly one’s of an introverted black man in America

one of my most precious projects is yours to keep forever :) to stand free in your brain is black power! blackpowers are soul tactics to activate yourself. we black people struggle with self-harnessing, so i made black powers to give you a grip. 🖤

ci §uuf 10 lockpick!s, 10 powers videlicet;

maraboutage - power of possession

the orisha’s chant - power of the gods

lowersslf- power of one’s lower self

sight screaming - power of the eye

redmxxn - power of accession

reload!!! - power of primal rage

777made - power of the angels

refusetobeaslave - power of assertion

shikifujin - power of the reaper's cradle

chosen - power of acceptance

special thanks to dt, prodigy and zzakkatt you guys rock"

How fucking dope is that? So dope that when 516reapa tags his music "Afrofuturism" he may just succeed in taking the term back from the slough of ubiquity and in so doing, presently forge new tomorrows from a repaired past. And that's not even the half of it. Fact is, the closer you listen, the clearer it becomes that he's not just mumbling. Those are indeed words. If you ever imagined rap couldn't possibly get more abrasively dialectal than it is now, reimagine. It's a new day and from Hempstead, NY, rises The New Prodigy.

***12/24/24 EDIT: It's back!***

Ray Robinson - Black Suit

Do you like this? "What do you mean? Do you?" I mean, of course I do. I wouldn't do it otherwise, but there is something to be said for a second set of ears, or in this case, eyes and ears and maybe more than two. Relevant trivia from the Spiderman Wiki: the black suit started as a fan idea. Marvel bought it for cheap. Fans hated it, so Marvel decided to can it, but then fans came around to it, so Marvel kept it around for longer—or something to that effect. The point is most people don't really know what they like aside from the obvious. Then there are people who know all too well. I'm thinking of Henry Rollins living with a massive archive of vinyl and paper records, all meticulously sorted and stored in an acid-free environment, all alone. I figure the trick is landing somewhere in the middle, like creating the Long Island Hip Hop Wiki so that such a thing does exist, but not taking the time to actually build the thing by oneself. After all, I've already compiled the records. You're looking at them. Now hear this.

Lyrica - DONE DREAMIN'

"The ends justify the means" only works when the ends aren't just as fucked as the beginning. I don't want to read about the lawsuits. I want to write around the Lyrica album I've slept on since 2017. Carlin said, "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." When 'woke' entered white vernacular, I daydreamed of Killarmy's "Wake Up," my alarm clock for much of my 20s, finding its way to major motion picture soundtracks, surfacing a Killa Sin solo album that never was. 

Unknogne - Long Island Reaper

Somebody ought to invent an analog instrument that can hit phonk notes without electricity. Imagine a cross between an accordion and a bass drum, a percussive wind with murderous bellows and a balaclava mouthpiece. We'll hold practice in abandoned mental asylums, shock therapy wards for orchestra pits, sheet music scrawled in garbage on the floor and graffiti on the walls. Unknogne orates from around the Gateway's Haunted halls and far beyond its seasonal attractions. Trap or play, every house is a haunt.