Author Archives: Kabir Hamid

On her Rhymesayers debut, The Death of Frequent Flyer, local MC Psalm One demonstrates a remarkable fluidity–she changes moods like they were clothes, though her easygoing swagger is recognizable no matter the outfit. On “Rapper Girls” she decapitates female MCs with lines like “Never be more than that girl who raps good for a girl […]

Mr. Lif’s congested, sandpapery voice and El-P’s cataclysmic production both commit aggravated assault on the eardrums, and on Lif’s new Mo’ Mega (Def Jux) they make an intimidating pair. This time El-P backs off from his customary otherworldly density, trying sparser, more industrial textures–steely electric guitars, jittery percussion, corroded keyboard sounds–that if anything make his […]

PREFUSE 73’s new Security Screenings (Warp) is as much a clinic as an album. Few hip-hop producers, mainstream or underground, are capable of creating such dense sampladelic patchworks–Scott Herren not only nicks from a sprawling range of genres, somehow making every chopped-up bit fit snugly among the others, but constructs his tracks so that they […]

Of all the one-MC-one-producer collaborations I’ve heard in recent years–MF Doom and Danger Mouse, Aceyalone and Rjd2, Common and Kanye–Murs and 9th Wonder have the most natural chemistry. On the new Murray’s Revenge (Record Collection), their second full-length, 9th’s lilting, soul-driven beats set a mellow mood that lets Murs’s confrontational, self-revelatory rhymes pull you in […]

I gave this Florida crew’s debut, And Now . . . (6 Hole), the number-eight spot on my 2005 top-ten list, but I should’ve put it higher up–maybe even above Kanye and all his Grammys. It’s the best feel-good hip-hop to come out in the past couple years–less a get-up-and-shake-it record than the kind of […]

In the PR for 20/20 (ABB/Capitol), MC and producer Evidence says the Dilated Peoples approached the new album like they were making a bunch of 12-inches: “We weren’t worried about how it was going to connect and if we had two love songs and one party song,” he explains. Thank the Lord. Given that the […]

The best moments on the new Grandmasters (Angeles Records), a collaboration between GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan and Cypress Hill producer DJ Muggs, are like flashbacks to when I was a pimply teenager listening to Liquid Swords too loud and driving too fast. Muggs does his best impersonation of RZA circa 1995, looping single-word samples […]

For me, listening to a Peanut Butter Wolf mix is like eating at an Indian buffet: everything’s delicious, but half the time I have no idea what it is. (Doubly embarrassing, since I’m not just a music writer but part Indian too.) In fairness, Wolf doesn’t exactly make it easy to follow along–his recent holiday […]