Emanon - Dystopia

Here's something different. Emanon is soul singer/rapper Aloe Blacc and beatmeister Exile. Their albums are Imaginary Friends, The Waiting Room, and Dystopia. If that's not up my alley then i should just get out of the lurking in alleys business altogether. What's their Dystopia like? 

Well, Aloe Blacc's personal dystopia involves only making about $4,000 off Avicii's Wake Me Up. Yes, that's Aloe Blacc singing, Avicii was just the DJ/producer. Avicii sadly killed himself in 2018, and his family made it quite clear that the "business machine he found himself in" was a contributing psychological factor. 

Whether or not that 4k is fair in the grand scheme of things is up for debate, it is after all only 1 song, but remember that Laura Nyro sold 1 song to Peter, Paul, and Mary for 5k back in the 60s and Wake Me Up was by almost any standard a very big and ubiquitous top hit in the 20-teens, and it definitely still gets radio play now. 4k over 10 years is $400/year off only 1 song, regardless of its comparative value. It's fantastic if you're a guy in his basement, totally worthless if you've got millions in overhead (and signing any kind of major label deal is basically like signing a blank check). Both perspectives are true because money is a commodity. At a certain point you can have so much that it loses all value and you can't even imagine any more ways to spend it fast enough. The reality of "billionaires" is that regardless of your intentions you are hoarding money and mistakenly presuming your payroll is an investment that should gain value. It's not, you're now the defacto gatekeeper of the tide of public money, and no one can do anything until you decide to let it slosh back the other direction. Think of it this way, if you're arguing that billionaire private investors are the best economic system, what you're really arguing is that a complete wealth/poverty divide is better than adjusting to the more natural tide of the monetary ocean. Your boom is a bust for everyone else and your busts are sudden inflation spikes. 

I disagree, that actually sucks when you're forced to participate by having so little money that it's extremely valuable. I vote for no tsunamis in the sea of money. 

Regardless, we're here for an album that probably explains it better, or at least more gracefully, than i do. And my goodness is it lovely. This is classic, sample heavy, lo-fi neo-soul hip-hop at its finest. My hip-hop palate isn't as sophisticated as other genres, but in terms of style and flow Aloe sounds like equal parts Mos Def and Eminem with a splash of Kendrick Lamar. Not as gritty or sluggish as MF Doom, but nowhere near as crisp or breakneck as a speed or gangsta rapper. Regardless, Dystopia is an absolute delight to listen to, a top shelf blend of modern and Golden Age with the most fantastic Upright Bass lines and a tasteful amount of electronic jibber jabber. Their styles definitely compliment each other. 

Exile's production on this album is very loose, almost wonky. Rather than sounding awkward though, i think that looseness brings a highly authentic feeling to the table. He isn't really juggling two tables and scratching like he's Grandmaster Flash filling in at a Beck concert, but it feels more like it than most studio productions. It's not quantized to perfection, it herks and jerks and stutters in places, some of the mixing muddy, it feels, if not live, then alive. I'm also fascinated by the very familiar Christian biblical passages used not as the focus of the tracks, but simply as a natural part of the backdrop. Godless heathen i am, the coopting of "our father, who art in Heaven, Aloe by thy name" into the brag rap context is you have to admit really likable in a New Jersey Mafia kind of way, like "hey ma, i like 'dis guy." 

Emanon, Dystopia, i think you won't be sorry if you check it out. 

Stay different, my friends. You do you and imma be myself.

Lunch break