A big month for collaborative hip-hop records. My recommended best long playing albums from August..
Busta Rhymes – Dillagence 2
A sequel to Busta Rhymes’ beloved 2007 mixtape The Dillagence, once again pairing the motormouth New York legend with the beats of the late, peerless producer J Dilla.
While the original dropped a year after Dilla’s death, there was a sense of fresh celebration and rawness in the sentiment of the music. This time around, Dilla’s legacy long-established, is no rote retread celebration of his musical life.
Busta received 300 beats from J Dilla prior to his death in 2006, which all remained private except for Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II (2009) and these Dillagence mixtapes, and part 2 accentuates the vision and creativity of Dilla as a beat maker, with the release featuring some of his stankiest swinging beats.
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Dillagence 2 brings in Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Big Sean, T3 of Slum Village, Talib Kweli, Jon Batiste and a post-humous feature from the one and only D’Angelo, a Dilla disciple.
Busta’s energy and Dilla’s soulful production remain a perfect match. A loving tribute and a real event for hip-hop heads.
Mike D – Thank You
The first ever solo album from a member of the Beastie Boys under their own name (word up Adam Yauch’s BS2000), and the first full-length from the surviving pair since 2011’s Hot Sauce Committee Part 2. Michael Diamond had stepped away from music entirely after the death of Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch in 2012 brought the group to an end, pouring himself into fatherhood instead. His way back in came through his sons: a surprise appearance with Skyler and Davis Diamond’s band Very Nice Person snowballed into solo shows, a backing band called 5D with his sons in it, and now, at 60, a debut record of his own.
Made at low-key, experimental home-studio sessions and finished with a loose cast of young collaborators, Thank You is a warm, percussion-forward record that wears its heart wide open. Singles like the ESG-indebted ‘True Colors’ and frantic percussive ‘Switch Up’ set the tone: playful, generous and unbothered by legacy. Diamond has said he simply wanted it to be fun and not overly serious, released into a world that too often devalues art and feeling. From a hip-hop pioneer with nothing left to prove, it is a genuine joy to hear Mike D enjoy himself on tracks like the booming sonic crunch of ‘That’s Right’ and the rowdy dub of ‘Make It Stop’.
Cornelius – REFRACTIONS
One of my favourite artists across the last 30 years, Cornelius is the Japanese producer and composer Keigo Oyamada whose albums are always bursting with melody, playful inventiveness and experimental pop joy. His eighth album REFRACTIONS opens outward, through collaboration: Sean Ono Lennon sings on ‘Aeons’, with Arto Lindsay, The Monochrome Set and longtime foil Shintaro Sakamoto also contributing.
REFRACTIONS is yet another fine record in the Cornelius experimental pop discography – album draws from fried funk, pointillist ambient, tropicália, psychedelia, kosmische experimentation and serotonin-bursting jams, while resisting categorisation. No one makes music quite like Cornelius.
Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume – ii
A new collaborative album from the Florida rapper Denzel Curry and the producer Kenneth Blume fka Kenny Beats Following their UNLOCKED EP in 2020. Curry remains among the most ferocious and versatile voices in modern hip-hop, moving between rage-fuelled intensity and genuine lyrical depth, and he sounds like he’s on his MF Doom shit here, with Blume’s bright soulful rhythmic productions keeping things light and bright, clocking in at just 25 minutes. JPEGMAFIA, Yebba, Westside Gunn drop in too.
Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Weekend
The third solo album from Phoebe Bridgers, her first in six years and the follow-up to 2020’s defining Punisher. In the years between, Bridgers reunited boygenius with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, dated Kildare man Paul Mescal (he’s mentioned), then went almost dark, resurfacing this summer with a run of phone-free pop-up shows that built to a surprise gig at Madison Square Garden. Lost Weekend landed as one of the most anticipated records of the year.
It’s clearly her most sonically ambitious record to date – 16 songs across three “sides”, co-produced with Jack Antonoff and Alex G and stacked with collaborators like Baker and Dacus, Caroline Shaw, Christian Lee Hutson, Damien Jurado, Maya Hawke, Geese’s Cameron Winter (as Son-John Johnson) and Nickel Creek bluegrass guitarist and singer Chris Thile among them.
Proceeded by the single ‘Lost Boys’, the songs move from the breakup with Mescal, the grief of losing her father (who appears on the song ‘Never Going Back!’ in voice note form) to the giddy rush of new love, funny, spooky and devastating by turns. There are sonic textures on this record that echo some of Bon Iver’s experimental sonics, some beautiful ambient-leaning angelic backing vocal passages, with the songs wrapped up in starbursting production – i’ve seen criticism that it could sync some normie romance film drama – this album isn’t going to convince the haters – but there’s a cool sound design element to the album, that places the album in some reflective cosmic realm, as if Bridgers is looking back on life outside of it, underscored by the emphasis on planetarium listening parties in lead up to the release.
The title track is a quiet choral hum that does a lot with a little until it lifts – without losing sight of the folk, indie and rock songwriting that got Bridgers where she is. Dips into country and bluegrass are more pronounced on ‘Haunted’ and ‘I Can’t Wait’, and ‘Panorama’ is practically a jazzy interlude band intermission until the astral outro.
“Crying in a suit and tie,” she sings through a vocoder on opening track ‘The Outside’, before the punchline comes “But you should see the other guy.”
Lost Weekend is a journey through the last six years of Bridgers life with grief, breakup and new love the themes throughout a triumphant compelling record that is her single most creative album to date.
Bridgers plays two nights at the 3Arena in Dublin this November.
Erykah Badu & The Alchemist – Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment
The first studio album in 16 years from Erykah Badu, the neo-soul visionary behind Baduizm and Mama’s Gun, here paired with The Alchemist, the most revered and busiest producer in underground hip-hop. The unlikely collaboration began when Badu mentioned she wanted to rap over Mobb Deep’s ‘The Realest’, an Alchemist beat, and grew over 18 months of sessions between Dallas and Los Angeles into something far richer and stranger than a novelty.
Across 16 tracks it folds soul, blues, funk, jazz and hazy boom-bap into one hypnotic, compelling whole, with a guest list to match: Steve Lacy, Thundercat, Earl Sweatshirt, Kamasi Washington, Westside Gunn, DRAM and Joi.
Westside Cowboy – It Goes On (Island)
The debut album from Westside Cowboy, the Manchester four-piece who have become among the most talked-about new British bands in barely three years. Produced by Loren Humphrey (Geese, Cameron Winter, Wunderhorse), It Goes On filters American roots music through scrappy, joyful, community-minded DIY indie rock, all tangled guitars and four-part harmonies, that has been dubbed “Britainicana”, (like Americana but clunkier).
They play Whelan’s in September.
Really Good Time – Affirmations
The debut album from Really Good Time, the Dublin band who first surfaced in 2021 with a line-up drawing on members of Beach, Fat Pablo and Wastefellow, and the pick of this week’s Irish releases. Across a run of singles and gleefully surreal, comedic music videos, from ‘Best Medicine’ and ‘Afternoon Tea’ to ‘Victory Button’ and ‘Mountain of Spit’, they built a reputation as one of the most characterful and playfully strange bands on the Dublin circuit.
The band recently reconfigured as a three-piece and Affirmations, trailed by the singles ‘Shit One’, ‘Do It’ and ‘The Love Song’, gathers that off-kilter energy into a first full-length.
The album conclusively affirms Really Good Time as a band who are aptly-named, their album fizzes with transmissible full pelt sonic energy that spills over these wry and genial rock songs.
Czarface – Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer
A new album from Czarface, the comic-book-obsessed supergroup of Inspectah Deck, Esoteric and DJ 7L, this time joined by an unlikely guest: the actor Tom Hardy, rapping in an American accent under the alias Frankie Pulitzer. It sounds ridiculous on paper, but with features from Method Man, Busta Rhymes and El-P, it is played with real love for boom-bap tradition. Great, silly fun.
Getdown Services – Massive Champion
The second album from Getdown Services, the Bristol duo of Josh Law and Ben Sadler, whose deadpan disco-punk pairs very British, absurdist wit with a real knack for a groove.
It’s the follow-up to their cult 2022 debut Crisps and out via Breakfast Records, Massive Champion spins British childhood and everyday detritus into thirteen tracks of anarchic joy, off the back of a relentless touring run that has turned them into a serious and very silly live draw. There are songs here that sound like Status Quo, Baxter Dury with dashes of synth pop and electro house and there’s one track about very British idea of the public right of way. Fun, loud and lairy for the most party but also some fine softer songs throughout.
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
