PINKYANDTHEBRAIN - THEMELLOS (2021)
I don’t have any tattoos, but when I was a younger man I considered getting a tattoo of The Animaniacs. Then I thought better of it because, what if I don’t like or care about Animaniacs in 20 years.
Well it’s been closer to 30 years since I made that choice, and not only do I still love Animaniacs, I’ve since produced three children whom I’ve often referred to as Yakko, Wakko, and Dot (tho tbf Wakko didn’t grow up to be quite whacky enough to fit that name; no fault of hers)
This is all to say that when I’m confronted with an endless stream of boutique rappers, the ones I’m gonna notice are the ones to make loose concept albums held together with Animaniacs characters Pinky And The Brain as a framing device.
Despite the Internet telling me that Lynn, MA only has about 100,000 people, it seems to be full of nerd-culture-loving psychedelic rappers and producers who work in blasted out beats and schizophrenic samples and a general weirdcore aesthetic.
If you read Bandcamp Daily or AlbumOfTheYear, you might have come across al.divino or Estee Nack or Baejing, but The Mellos are the ones that seem to keep sticking out to me.
The duo go by the names Smello and Swaello (whose mamas, I would wager, ain’t name them that) have made a bunch of this style of hyper-condensed chaos rap. This is as good an example as any, and if you don’t like it I imagine there will be another release in a few months.
