Angel Del Villar II emcees under the codename Homeboy Sandman. He has written for RapRehab, the Huffington Post, and Gawker. You can follow him on Facebook here.
Obey the Altar Native, which is a three-man crew out of Arizona consisting of emcees named Obey, Denone, and Ro Ruckus, just put out Musical Advancement on 4/20 and it is fat.
Despite the release date it’s not at all pothead rap — it’s want-to-be-impressed-by-clever-lyrics-and-hear-some-fat-ass-production rap. It’s fun rap too, but with serious ish sticking out all here and there. And heavy on the nostalgia tip.
There’s 22 tracks on the record and as if that wasn’t enough the longest is 10 minutes long and the tracks are about six minutes on average and most of them are multiple beats combining to make one track that holds a consistent theme or objective. A very full serving. They might maybe perhaps remind you of Lootpack but a bit superlyricaler. (Not that Lootpack didn’t get busy.) They definitely stand on their own tho.
“Got the game locked like Guitar Hero at Target.” There’s fat lines like that all through the album but there’s also deeper, more cerebral lines that say a lot with a little. “Five-star General Motors… Your trigger finger points out the obvious… feed Americans in fear of eating beef without the seasoning.” These cats are slick.
These cats are phenomenal storytellers too, and not only do they tell some unique stories but they tell them in unique ways. There’s the one about the person that was carjacked when they were almost out of gas so the carjacker couldn’t really go anywhere but then the car was hit by a truck because the truck driver had been drinking and the bartender forgot to call the cops and the person that witnessed the whole thing from the bus stop doesn’t want to cooperate with the police, and as it turns out the truck was hauling illegal cargo and the only reason I know all of this stuff is because to tell the story they assume the identity of a different character in the tale with each line so you get so many different perspectives. Very original.
Then they got the one about the dude that has a one-night stand with his boss’ ex-wife and winds up oversleeping so he gets fired and how all his coworkers had already got with her. There’s the one about the corny kid who’s got enough money to buy all the fanciest equipment for making terrible music who gets signed to a major label. They got a bunch of them. Yo, how about the one where the guy that greases the rides at the amusement park keeps to himself so much that no one realizes that he died so the rides go unmaintained so the Ferris wheel malfunctions. These are some creative dudes.
My only critique is that they do some things that should be outlawed. Saying “lyrically” should be outlawed. I caught them doing it at least twice. You can’t say “sicker than syphilis” or any derivative of that — it has been done too many times and should also be outlawed. I would say that you’re not allowed to make songs shouting out all the rappers you grew up listening to any more either, but these cats did it so well and spliced so much social commentary into it that I’ma let it slide. “Flavor Flav once told me to fight the power/ Today I saw him on VH1, he embarrassed me for an hour… Light-skinned girls were the joint/ and if you looked more like Kid than Play you could have whichever you wanted.” And how 2 Live Crew was banned for imagery that these days is commonplace. So they brought they own flavor to it.
This joint is def. I bet you’ll feel it.
