Long overdue some coverage on MB (it’s been out just over a month) is new eight-track hip-hop mini-album The Wreckage from Create-A-Mess a.k.a. Soundsci founder Jonny Cuba. Cuts are supplied by Soundsci and The Herbaliser’s Ollie Teeba while the featured vocalists are Jesus Mason, Emskee, J Scienide, Eddie Meeks, Oxygen, U-George, Ghettosocks, Nilla and Jack Jones. Which is actually longhand for ‘this is dope shit.’ Why? Because pretty much any of the preceding names are a hallmark of project quality while all of them together is a gold standard.
All Cuba’s beats on The Wreckage are what the kids will refer to as 90s hip-hop, which is to say classic-sounding and apparently sample-based boom-bap, though his samples have got the heads scratching their heads as to his sources. Irrespective of that, this is phat shit – beats maximally dosed with funk and library music in terms of sound. Opener Clues finds Jesus Mason and Emskee delivering slick rhymes on a chunky Quannum-ish head-nodder while Denmark Hill is funkier still, this time with J Scienide and Eddie Meeks holding down the mic. One of the monkey’s favourite cuts is third track Planet People which takes a darker turn both musically (in going full sixties horror sound track) and lyrically too with Oxygen & Emskee exploring the ill behaviour that the human ape is capable of inflicting on its own species. On the still soundtrack-ish but jazzier Thaddeus III, U-George does a turn as ‘Thaddeus Brown’ a blaxploitation-esque persona opining stream-of-consciousness tyle about thug life. The breaker-friendly Fly Humans pits Ghettosocks against Nilla in a rumination on the female of the species being deadlier than the male leaving a closing trio of Pull Your Card, Listen Sun! and Grammaticals featuring, Jack Jones, Emskee and Jack Jones & Eddie Meeks respectively. The first and second of these provide two more Quannum Projects-style funky head-nodders while the third delivers a sparsely cinematic backdrop for Jack n Eddie to reflect on the art of rhyme. Those in the know are all over this for good reason. You should be too.
(Out now HERE)