sunezBy SUNEZ [ #SkillastratorLO ] [ #PowerWrite ]
A thousand times upon a block….or there once was a Brown frowned brother who….or a long long rhyme ago in a bodega close by…Tales told of consequences clashing on carcasses of characters. Statements in scenes and commentaries in dialogues and issues inside the tissues of endings. Backdrops of whips, costumes of Timbs and galloping Ralph Lauren logos upon griots of gutter that break fourth walls with fo-fo’s. Just more words of happenings to beats clappening the rappers be rappening. All apt to be amplified til the tale fades, the men who make moments sentences, prepare them into verses and orate them as break portraits, our MCs of dystopian dialect amidst real motherfuckin degradation. The foreign language that travels on snares, high hats and bass pulses, my brother from a land far from mine, Cyrus Malachi, has mastered. Transcendent Blackness is the translation of this illness.
Dystopian Dialect uses its breaks with the hardest and crispiest of snares and thickest of drums to lubricate the words while the sounds uncovered and vocals that sing through are to attach the ideas to the screens Cyrus’ verses play. Dystopian is rich with tales in all persons, varying views and becomes a complete novel of lyricism. The cycle of sexual savagery of “Sacrificial Lambs” that details more than the gruesomeness of the crime but the hideousness of the mindset. The mentalities are the jewels in Cyrus’ tales as on the incredible “Manifest Destiny” that must sit on the same mantel as Organized Konfusion’s “Hate” that magnifies from the latter’s specific redneck Klu Klux Kracker to the entire voice of European Caucasians’ colonial imperialist lifestyle. These peaks are the odd duality of incredible Hip Hop to anger us in such a blatant presentation of facts we still suffer from yet awe us in the brilliance of Cyrus’ way of putting 6000 years psychologically into 4 minutes of song. It becomes an addendum piece to Ras Kass’ classic “Nature of the Threat.”
The core of the LP’s storytelling is hoisted by the declarative hardcore mission statements of “Blood Moon” that lay out vicious brutality (“The scarlet pimpernel you fear me like an infidel/drown you in a wishing well/flush away your dreams in the Suez canal/ you could get touched/ I’m fluid in braille/cobra clutch/’til you’re blue and pale”) but centers on a reasoning of honorable righteousness (“I depict grimly/ because reality is ugly/ the principalities/ who judge me…there’s no spook in heaven/on the truth which is within dwelling…”). These are new verses for old souls that still know the anthemic ingredients to the best of Hip Hop lyricism. It is Cyrus’ ability to portrait hell so magnificently they become inspirations to the soldier, the hearted layman who can lay down no more, who must use every lift he has and make his next step and leave behind pieces of ladders to his brethren. And this brilliance of penned sorrow is no more beautiful as the sickness of “Shamballah,” where he scribes, “We languish amongst the anguish/..roads and street codes is like another language/where dreams dissolve like solubles/the liquid of poverty bottled into chronicles/Black literature and oracles/violent acts like Forrest Whitaker/The dishonorable coke barrels they swallow hollows through/ they weren’t promised tomorrow to/Black whips in transit/they spoil like grams in the sandpit/my rhymes are a transcript of a broken generation with jail fate/the untold perpetuation of self-hate…”
Cyrus’ baritone instrument has reached a perfection that allows him to refuse the help of massive hooks aside from gorgeous balladeering (“Regrets,” “Sacrificial Lambs”), the sharp DJ cuts (“Archers”) or the most sinister chimes (“Manifest Destiny”) or vocal wails (“Neon”) that scenery his poesy. Musically, producer Architech creates Dystopian Dialect as a skeletal foundation of the most hardest break bones that allow the flesh pages of Cyrus’ vivid storytelling to meld and unite. The organs of this project are their unity, that each listen opens us to grabbing a thought, admiring a word choice, lamenting a portrayal and merely enjoying the thickness of drums from the sliding snares of “Chemical Romance” to the smack drums and reverberated bassline on “The Inquisition” to the high snare on “Shamballah” that guide the choruses piano stabs and the verses piano melodies of doom, wah wah notes, realized chimes and surpise horns that funk the manifesto. This is music that lives in the next conversation, the next glorious solitary moment of appreciation and the next inspired work of another, as I build here.
Focus, formed to fight is the ordered trilogy of training you hear when you listen to an MC that reaches their prime and his third solo LP still doesn’t acknowledge the mass appeal at all. These conditions are rare that the respect of the art leads to the attraction of new listeners. With greater skill and after having just led a classic LP with his group Triple Darkness’ Darker Than Black LP (#ArtOnArt & #ScienceOnMusic Review HERE) Cyrus tells even more bold and brutal stories that are now like selected chapters in a longer book. A book that we must keep listening to from one of the greatest lyricist/poets of our generation.
Cyrus Malachi – Black Athena 2013 LP #ArtOnArt & #ScienceOnMusic Review HERE
BUY Dystopian Dialect HERE
Cyrus Malachi Twitter HERE