sunezBy SUNEZ
There’s an overflowed funneling of fullfingness’s finally freed dumb by the front of Red Lobster, the crab castle of the queerest queen. Crab niggas lined up exposing their manicured climbing nails searching to outflank the barrel sides of the industry. They stare intensely into the tinted windows of Red Lobster to see the already-fucked niggas who sold their soul. Inside, gorgeously crowned vixens hover around, all hunters that were once hunted. At the sight of the next thirsty fish, the black fisted vixens march out, fistful of blue pills raised high, all to rain down onto the bucket of lusty crabs. Some are swallowed in commercial sales while others hit the concrete matrix, returned to the essence, incoming incenses of hits cover the stenches.
Across the street, a long asphalt break and distant blues beat away, much happens past QQ’s pornographed revolution and her boy king’s Blackened strips of rugged individualism. A little to the left, to the left and to the left again, the sounds of the #PrettyHiccup, the smells of the fermented formation and the sights of sizzled young minds can’t be heard. The firm foundation for Hip Hop keeps taking root around here where we premierely dwell. Let’s build here, with one of the illest combinations yet to Huff and rumble this world.
The Boom Bap is a format that is constricted to the Premo classic outline however, it is even more profound. It is really a purity of sound where the drums are thick, the basslines fill the room and the lyrics exhibit an MC’s best techniques and most unique ideas. These type of LPs exist in all regional formats despite the coonery we’ve come to expect from some. If we were to hear an album that exudes the spirit of the best 90’s West Coast (*note NYC lens: everything left of NYC is often West Coast) LPs (i.e. We Come Strapped) we’d want to hear the beats flip classic slow jams (“Tears In A Bucket”) with the rough, slow tempo burners filled with long basslines and sharp, heavy snares (“Savage”) led by an MC flowing with the enunciation ill of his hometown dialect (“Huff Almighty”), detailed with the real time world of the Black man and balanced with bravado and builds. G. Huff’s Royalty For A Lifetime fits this criteria and leaves great anticipation for G. Huff’s next works.
A solo LP is to define an MC, his hustle, trials and his growing insights. That’s where G. Huff comes from. His story on “I Need Work” is such a simple told struggle autobio where his stylistic emphasis on complete articulation, lengthening vowels and consonants to drag with the beat. It lets his drawl stall his ideas long enough to make an anthemic rhythm in our head, where the horns, whistles and wails travel past our ear’s peripheral vision, the bass drums boom, the drums snap and the million high hat drumrolls start to melodify. As the chorus drones, “Clocks keep ticking but it ain’t moving fast enough,” the realness of G Huff life segues into our own struggles. And he constantly hypnotizes at different intensities despite the addictively slow tempos his tracks ride too. So M.O.E. Beats’ “Savage” only moves at a half tempo quicker but the bass drum drop is as tough as the gavel on the innocent as G. Huff’s verses the frustration that accumulates beyond the sum of ill parts (“ baby momma left me for another nigga that’s lame…creative people think about suicide the most/can’t cope with the right side of their brain, it’s a shame…”). G. Huff’s lyric skill is often, as the verse prior subtly shows is his internal rhyming through a repetition of vowels throughout the verses. He constantly rhythms his lines with precise syllabic matching (“For breakfast: chicken wings, greens and Hennesy/smoke in my lungs, alcohol in my kidneys/karma coming back like a Frisbee” – “Finding Focus”) and his charisma is delivered as a accepted fact as his bravado, an undeniable dominance of a supreme Black man tormented through an oppressive world as his second “Finding Focus” verse outlines the illness of his escapes. “Cash Rules” brightens as he takes us through the inspiration of hustling for the fam and “Do It To You” thuds bass drums through thick hand claps for that big brawl track, while the tempo is most increased on the whistling “Be Easy” where his flow speeds and drops jewels “the American dream/my worst nightmare/the Black man make moves, the white man right there/its like Virgil and Ted DiBiase/but I’m no house nigga/I’m more like Selassie..” The slower tempos and the consistency of Huff’s concentrated bio of realness gives a cohesiveness to the tracks and beats reach states of fluidity as on the booboom bap with the high snare cymbal crash of Da Bopman’s “H.N.H.(Hoes N Housewives)” lets Huff kick it on the noting of a women’s worth.
Knowing G. Huff has just slightly–barely scratched the surface of his commentary on endless issues, Royalty For A Lifetime, really is just a short primer introduction to the Ohio brother, who after his respectable Vacant Thoughts EP of 2013, has developed his technical skills since then at an alarming rate. It is a development only a true Boom Bap listener, a Hip Hopper who studies with the utmost enjoyment, will amazingly spot the dramatic elevation. One that has made Royalty For A Lifetime a rugged oasis from hard times, the bios we Black and Brown understand that the genre aficionados wait for. Through this “Rakim meets the DOC” Ohio brother, G. Huff, MCing with the smoothest cadence, fluid insight and relaxed allure welcomes us to the realer grind on this far away block of Hip Hop.
G.Huff “Royalty For A Lifetime” ITunes HERE
G.Huff “Royalty For A Lifetime” Google Play HERE