- Elevator
- Lucki Ecks
Between the surprise release of Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment’s Surf last Thursday and Lil Durk’s eagerly awaited major-label debut (Remember My Name) landing in stores yesterday it might’ve been easy to miss Lucki Ecks‘s third mixtape, X (Vol. 1), which came out Saturday. On X the local MC-producer continues to rap like someone who sounds like they’re just barely awake—and he continues to make it sound interesting, teasing out a subtle tension in his cool, lackadaisical flow. One of Lucki’s gifts as a rapper is making what sounds like a state of narcolepsy feel exciting and rejuvenating, and usually it takes a great instrumental to bring out the energy.
Lucki achieves this balance on a handful of tracks from X, including today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Mac N Cheese,” which Lucki produced. A loop of what sounds like a bell ripples through the track, and the pinging sample is practically ornate against an otherwise cold, minimal beat, on which a bare hand-drum pattern and vocal sample slowed till it oozes are the only other dominant sounds besides Lucki’s voice—these elements all work together to provide steady jolts of adrenaline. Check out “Mac N Cheese” below—it is lunchtime right now, and as Chief Keef would say, it’s “Macaroni Time.”