»I guess I’m just bored / another Rap-Album«. The Mello Music signing Red Pill (who is also one extremely relaxed third of the Ugly Heroes) is not a subtle texter. On his second solo-record, »Look What This World Did To Us«, there are no crazy or stagy technical downhill rides, no hanger-ons looking for trends and no pieces of hyped fantasy-prose. It’s both, the man on the street’s rebellion and continuance: »Let me drink my wine, let me smoke my stuff, let me write my songs«, as he states on »Ten Year Party«. There are more enthusiastic ways to present one’s own raps. It would be easy to label these twelve tracks as profane, especially when listening sample-crates made of jazz and soul, drumbreaks from the funk-loop-box and when seeing the combination with the golden-era-socialization in the productions of L’Orange, Hir-O, KuroiOto, Duke Westlake, Castle and Red Pill himself. However, it’s this simple structure that makes Red Pill’s laid back working-class rap come to life, especially when it deals with stories about everyday life in windowless factories, with alcohol problems or the usual baby-mama-drama, which are being reflected impressively kitschless. »[I’m] the flat tire in the storm / the internet going out, when you’re trying to watch porn« – one understatement after another, and still, Red Pill has left room for enough self-mockery in between all the pessimistic subtlety. All in all, it’s his disarming honesty, the bittersweet (yet organic and warm) soul-bap background and his unagitated acceptance of the general shittiness of things which make »Look What This World Did To Us« so exciting. And still, it might not be exciting enough to be noticed in the wwwonderful world of constant confrontation with new music. What’s the saying again? A pearl doesn’t search, a pearl is being found.
Amine Laje
Datsha
Rotary Phono Lab