Vacation In Hell - Flatbush Zombies (2018)

Ideated from: going through some of my “best of month” lists I’ve been keeping for years.

This is off the “best of month, April 2018” list. Other things on this list: The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs by Wye Oak, KOD by J Cole, For Travellers Only by Sebastien Texier

You could spend months just listening to hip hop that’s come out just in the 5 boroughs, just in the last few years, and probably not even get through it all. Lots of rappers have opinions on which city runs Hip Hop (spoiler alert: it always seems to be the city that rapper is from, I’ve noticed, which I suspect might be due to some sort of availability bias) but you can’t pretend that NYC isn’t full of great rappers and producers.

These guys are fun because they’re each very good individually, but their flows are distinct. They play off each other’s different meters and vocal styles so there’s plenty of variety even before you add in a few top notch features. One verse will be right on the beat, and next will lag and drag and completely change the context of the beat, even though the track itself didn’t change.

Most of the tracks are produced by Erick The Architect, who seems to work primarily with these guys to give them a sound all their own. It’s spooky and hazy in places, but it always leans on smooth bass and lots of small upper register details that keep it from being monotonous.

Early on there’s a lot of ridiculous boasting and swagger. When I get hung up on lyrical content (which I do sometimes since it’s so culturally different from my own experience, and because I don’t always like listening to things that make me blush), I remind myself that one of these gentlemen has named himself Zombie Juice. It’s absurd and over the top because it’s supposed to be. I’m not reading somebody’s diary. I’m reading the super hero comic they’ve created in their heads.

I might have thought they could have trimmed down the runtime, except that they take a turn into some much more serious themes in the second half that you’ll miss if you fixate on cheeky fun of the first half. It makes sense to be sequenced this way, and they need all the material to make it a total package.

Tracks I Liked

Headstone - pure, ridiculous, sublime swagger

Crown - a collab with weirdo pop band Portugal. The Man that you wouldn’t think would work but it really does.

The Goddess - a slower, groovier track, that lands somewhere between a discussion of the Divine Feminine and a sex joke (and points for name-dropping Ric Flair)

Trapped - Shit gets real.