MUSIC

Assembling a 'Kwaidan'-style anthology from chewed scraps of noir, horror and dystopian sci-fi movies, billy woods chronicles Black American angst on 'GOLLIWOG', running circles around his peers and arriving on the AOTY for fans of Ka, EARL, Aesop Rock, Westside Gunn or Cannibal Ox. Featuring production from El-P, The Alchemist, DJ Haram, Saint Abdullah, Shabaka Hutchings and others.

The English language is violence, I hotwired it woods coolly quips on 'Jumpscare', tossing out run-on cadences to juggle polyrhythms between beatless double-bass and vaudeville Pan Sonic-esque electrical interferences. Within a track, he fully establishes the concept for 'GOLLIWOG', an album that surveys the full spectrum of horror, splicing together creaking floorboards, ticking clocks, industrial clanks, Herrmann-esque stabs and detuned pianos, maniacal screams and blood-curdling laughs to accompany knotty tales of corporeal terror. It's horrorcore in a sense, cobbling together its scenery with the same congealed raw materials as Necro or Prince Paul, but woods uses the schlocky formula to lighten his death blows, landing some of the deepest lyrical lacerations of his lengthy career so far; 'Dead Body Disposal' it ain't. "Daddy longlegs stride your home like Cecil Rhodes," he nicks, equating the fear of (harmless) spiders with the terror of a real-life boogeyman - the coloniser of Zimbabwe (where woods' father was born), no less. And the track ends with a seemingly throwaway vocal sample: "a horrid sight, the blackest gnome." A description of the titular character from American author Florence Kate Upton's 19th century children's book 'The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg', it's actually a clue to unpicking the album's title. What's fear, exactly, ponders woods, and what's merely ideology? And how does all of this become entertainment, let alone throwaway cutesy fodder for kids?

American horror as a genre has long broadcast the innermost fears of a nation who wears its ideology so boldly that it almost vanishes. Way back in the early 20th century, H.P. Lovecraft's racism manifested in stories of an ancient evil lurking beneath the New World's disturbed earth; later on, in the wake of the contraceptive pill and the subsequent free love movement, promiscuity was met with death and mutilation in an endless slew of slasher movies; and during peak neoliberalism, a taste for "torture porn" offset the stasis of safe liberal suburbia. woods accepts the history of horror, and proposes a true Black American Gothic archetype; just like Jordan Peele's 'Get Out' bolted together familiar tropes to signal how psychologically traumatic the Black experience can be within manicured white confines, woods bundles various cultural spikes to fabricate a more dangerous lyrical weapon. On 'BLK ZMBY', the ubiquitous zombie myth - a Haitian folkloric invention that was famously repurposed by George Romero in the '60s as a critique of American capitalism - is used as packaging for a barrage of knowledge that wraps references to Fela, Dune and Usual Suspects in thorny post-colonial theory. In Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead', the Black lead character spends 90 minutes fighting off zombies only to be shot in cold blood by beer chugging rednecks; now, woods' Black zombies have taken over the asylum, ignoring accountability and poisoning the water supply while the third world's corpse is sucked dry. "Zombies go home to platters of prawn and escargot," woods says, not letting Biggie off the hook. "New mothers struggle while the zombies suckle like baby goats."

DJ Haram handles the production on 'All These Worlds are Yours', dilating Shabaka Hutchings' transcendent improvisations with damaged '50s b-movie oscillations, rasping amp distortions and microtonal drones. "Today, I watched a man die in a hole from the comfort of my own home," woods recounts, accepting the day-to-day wartime horror-tainment we're fed on social media, 'Human Centipede'-style. "Trench fire, silent weapons, body horror, private booth," replies E L U C I D, woods' longtime Armand Hammer cohort. And woods coaxes out some of El-P's best production work in years on 'Corinthians', linking snippets of Lu Xun's 'Diary of a Madman' - that equates the Confucian ethical system with cannibalism - with the breakdown of late-stage Abrahamic morals that'll be closer to home for Anglophone listeners. "Best believe them crackers won't make it to Mars," he quips, double-underlining a verse that muddles St. Paul with Steven King, and Noah with the military industrial complex. By itemizing his own fears in a sequence of 'Cat's Eye'-style vignettes, woods launches hooks into the contemporary façade of terror-as-amusement, a fairground haunted house that's populated with very real demons. It's shockingly effective - the Pulitzer-ready rap album woods has been promising for aeons, and one of the very best things we've heard this year so far.

Following the release of the well received Rave ‘Till You Cry compilation of unreleased versions from the vaults in 2019, Disciples follow it up (a mere 5 years later!) with a new album from Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski, complete with another manifesto style title: You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever.

A collection of warmly melodic electronic sketches, with tracks alternately drifting beatless on the breeze or underpinned by lo-fi drums, sometimes barely held together with a delicate construction of odd synth patches and ping-pong percussion. Each piece is short and to the point, a record of perfect miniatures. Whilst this description may sound utopian, the album is conceived around themes of late stage capitalist brutality, hyper consumerism, online doom and alogorhithmic apocalypse. Beauty in the face of planetary collapse and 24/7 livestreamed genocide. The theme summed up by the front cover which just features a giant (readable) QR code, that most ubiquitous of modern symbols. We’ve asked Bogdan on several occasions for more background information on the creation of these tracks, but received a different answer each time. One of the below statements might be true, though it’s equally possible that none of them are, just like the real news.

1) All these tracks are a result of Bogdan asking AI to make an EDM album.

2) These tracks originated in a desperate bid by Bogdan to crack the lucrative mood / chill / coffee / gym algorithmic playlist market.

3) All of these tracks were commissioned for a Tesla infomercial but rejected when Elon Musk heard them.

4) The music on this album is over ten years old.

5) The music on this album was made in a furious weekend of creative inspiration in early 2024.

The QR code on the cover takes listeners to an ever-evolving page on Bogdan’s website which may delve into some of these theories in more detail, or ignore them completely.

We leave you with Bogdan’s text in the booklet that accompanied Rave ‘Till You Cry as the closest we may ever get to some kind of logical reasoning:

“Burn the damned art labels. Ambiguity is wonder. Information is an affront to expression, a death knell to spontaneity. For if an explanation is required, then a connection has failed to be made. Art should be like an overtone, resonating invisibly with your history to form an ethereal experience. Either it hits you or it’s wrong time, wrong place. To hell with the dawdling interviews and vanity shots. One turns to music precisely because it least resembles what’s in the mirror. Put away the arrogance and pride, and boast and bias. With each word uttered, your mystery wanes. Your shimmer dims. In my nostalgia, your light show is drowned out by the ricochet of soundwaves. Art is best when all else is drowned out. Black as though the moon forgot to come out. Let the night cover my flailing humanity like a veil. Gangly arms tangled, feet aflutter, yet all but silent against the din. This is not an escape. This is me screaming, happily, inside, out through my fingertips. This is my beck and call. Carefully assembled to drw forth some other form of you. May we partake in this moment together, for just a little longer.”

When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their first record, Sounding Out The City, in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented “cinematic soul” sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of tribute and remix projects later—all while producing for some of the biggest names in the industry—Michels has trademarked his sound, with each project taking audiences somewhere new and pushing the boundaries of what he is known for. The man is a river, not a lake and this time he takes his golden touch into the realm of hip-hop laying down a musical bed for one of the greatest to ever rhyme into a microphone: Black Thought of The Roots crew. Releasing on Big Crown Records, the LP is called Glorious Game and it is a remarkable debut partnership in more ways than one. Michels provides his bottom-heavy, soul-tinged production for Black Thought who gives us some of the more personal and transparent verses we've ever heard from him. Michels and Black Thought have been in each other's orbit for a while now. The two first met in the 2000s when Thought was first getting familiar with the contemporary soul scene. "Out of that whole world, Menahan Street Band was probably my favorite," recalling the funk and soul group Michels was a founding member of back in 2007. Fast forward a few years and musicians from that collective—Dave Guy on trumpet and Ian Hendrickson-Smith on sax —are now full time players with The Roots. This connection eventually led Leon and Thought to doing a few fundraising events around NYC and Philly together. "Before long, Black Thought was coming around the studio and would jam with us from time to time," Michels explains. "Then, fast forward to 2020 and COVID lockdowns, he just hit me up out of the blue, wanting me to send him stuff to write to. We both were looking to stay busy." Being that Black Thought is the co-founder and emcee for, hands down, the best live-band group in hip-hop. Michels took a decidedly different approach to this project and instead of sending recorded tracks of live compositions, he pulled out the sampler and sampled himself and some records from his collection. "I'm a big fan of soul music," as if Michels has to remind us. "And part of hip-hop's appeal to me has always been the sample-based production" For Glorious Game, Michels would make wholly composed and recorded soul songs in his studio, sample himself, then chop and/or loop up his sounds and create instrumentals for Black Thought. On some tracks he took a more traditional hip-hop approach, starting from samples of other people’s music but then adding live instrumentation on top. But for the most part, it's him reinterpreting his own compositions into something new. The result is an organic feel of loop-based tracks that breathe and fluctuate enough for Black Thought to flex on. "What I write about is determined by the equation of the producer's energy and my energy," Black Thought says. "It's about where we meet." So armed with Michels sampled and re-sampled soul cinematics, Black Thought rhymes through personal memories and distinctive perspectives, all dripping with visuals. The first single titled "Grateful"—a thick, low-end banger with a haunting flute line—gives you a nice intro into how the record will go. Black Thought's verses lay heavy in the way we've come to love: cadences that walk a line between street teacher and poet, explanation and experience, as he pays homage to what's come before him and how it's made him". The title track “Glorious Game” with its unhurried bassline and bouncing drum track finds Black Thought rhyming double-time about the trials of fame and respect but also speaking to his gifts and his well established place in hip-hop. On “The Weather”, he paints a vivid portrait of growing up in Philly. You can almost see his Grandma’s house in your mind as he rides the tempo changes of the track flanked by ghostly background vocals. "To me," Black Thought says about Glorious Game, "these songs are like scenes from a film that is my life. That's the way it evolved." And with his pure lyrical skill on full display and Michels' custom-made approach to making beats, this record is a bit of a rarity in today's hip-hop atmosphere: there are no flashy guest features and no attempts to be on trend. "This is an effing rap record. He's a storyteller; the point is to listen to the story. It's not a verse-chorus, verse-chorus approach. Listen to what he has to say and the way he has to say it."

The wait is over, Return To The 37th Chamber is El Michels Affair’s highly anticipated follow up to 2009's underground cult classic Enter the 37th Chamber. Churning out classic records since then for the likes of Lee Fields, The Arcs, The Shacks, and tons more, it is clear that EMA's signature sound is stronger & sharper than ever. This time, in addition to re-interpreting the Wu compositions for a live band, EMA pays homage to the production and sonic fog that makes a RZA beat so recognizable. Producer and bandleader Leon Michels recorded the album completely analog, sometimes hitting 6 generations of tape before it was ready for mixing, giving the Return to The 37th Chamber it’s own hazy sound. Adding to the unique fidelity, the record is laced with psychedelic flourishes, “John Carpenter” synths, heavy metal guitars, triumphant horns, and traditional Chinese instruments that make up for the lack of the Wu’s superlative vocals. From start to finish it’s a dark trip that walks the line between RZA’s timeless hip-hop aesthetic and the cinematic soul EMA has become known for. El Michels Affair tackles some classics like 4th Chamber and Wu Tang Aint Nuthin to Fuck Wit, as well as some deeper cuts like Ol Dirty Bastard’s Snakes, Raekwon’s Verbal Intercourse, and Shaolin Brew, Wu-Tang’s contribution to the St. Ide’s Hip Hop endorsement campaign from 1994. This time El Michels brings some of the Big Crown family along for the ride. Lee Fields handles vocal duties on Snakes and is joined by Shannon Wise of The Shacks for their version of Tearz, which pays as much homage to the Wendy Rene sample as it does to the Wu-Tang Clan. Lady Wray makes an appearance on the cover of Method Man’s hit, All I Need, lending her vocal prowess to what gave the Wu one of their biggest hits of all time. Interspersed throughout the record are some original interludes that are like the “rug that ties the room together,” giving Return To The 37th Chamber a cinematic narrative that makes it a proper El Michels Affair record and not just a collection of covers. The vinyl version of Return To The 37th Chamber is presented with 4 different hand painted covers. The originals were painted on two sewn together flour sacks in Accra, Ghana by Heavy J and Stoger, two artists who are legends in the Ghanaian Mobile Cinema scene and regular contributors to the Deadly Prey Gallery’s collection in Chicago. From the music to the presentation, this album is a perfect example of what can only be achieved through diversity. The end result is as much a kaleidoscope of influences and multiculturalism as the city it was recorded in. El Michels Affair is once again, “sounding out the city” that raised them, pulling elements of art and culture from across the country and around the globe to create an album truly unique in it’s own right.

A collection of intimate songs traced from the spectral darkness by Asahito Nanjo, the notorious leader of some of Japan’s key underground psychedelic units (High Rise, Mainliner, Musica Transonic, Toho Sara, etc) Recorded between 1980 and 1988 and previously only available in a cassette micro-edition released by his La Musica Records label in the mid-1990’s. Remastered and available for the first time on vinyl and digital. “A compilation of secret projects recorded over a period of twenty years. Deeply personal music that achieves a strange balance between beat folk balladry and off-key mumbling. Suggestive self-celebratory music conceived as a confirmation of existence.” – original La Musica cassette notes A lesser-known side of Nanjo Asahito – if all you know of his work is the overloaded, intensified psych-rock and free-sound of his group projects then the solo songs on M gently redraw the contours of Nanjo’s private universe. There’s something gem-like in the way these five songs are formed, even as they accrue grit and dirt while drifting out of the speakers. Here, Nanjo grabs handfuls of gentle chord changes, allows them to rotate in the air, suspended in reverb, flickering in half-light, as he murmurs drowsy melodies. The closing “Eucharist” pushes everything through a thin layer of distortion; elsewhere, tinkling piano, from guest Matsuoka Takashi, who also performed with Keiji Haino’s Nijiumu, disturbs dust molecules to dance through hazy air.

Nearly 48 hours of live improvised performance recorded at 1 venue over 12 months and 28 shows - culled, cut, rendered, and remixed into 19 potent pieces of organic beat music.

Makaya McCraven, a leading drummer, composer, and producer in contemporary jazz.

Having gained prominence through his works released by International Anthem, as well as reimagined versions of Gil Scott-Heron and Blue Note recordings, this leading drummer, composer, and producer in contemporary jazz has released a compilation of four EPs titled ‘Off the Record’ through XL Recordings, International Anthem, and Nonesuch. The album features recordings of pure improvisation captured during live performances, with the space and presence of the audience reflected in the sound. It is composed of four EPs—‘Techno Logic,’ 'The People’s Mixtape,‘ 'Hidden Out!,’ and ‘PopUp Shop’—that are independent yet organically interconnected.

This work follows his 2022 masterpiece ‘In These Times,’ which the GRAMMY Awards described as “the most ambitious work in Makavely's career.” It revisits the essence of “organic beat music” that Makaya established in his 2015 debut album ‘In the Moment,’ and further developed in ‘Highly Rare’ (2017), 'Where We Come From' (2018), and ‘Universal Beings’ (2018). Makaya reconstructs his live recordings into his unique sound world through editing, overdubbing, and post-production at his home studio in Chicago. The compilation of these four EPs, ‘Off the Record,’ is not merely a collection of tracks but a documentary work celebrating the creative and collaborative moments of music that could only have been born from being present in that space.

“Eero : Eesu” is a spiritual and experimental sound‑art work by Adey Omotade, a Lagos‑born artist whose experiences across Paris, Johannesburg, Berlin, Côte d’Ivoire, and other places inform his unique fusion of Yoruba traditions with contemporary sonic practices.

Jazz and Hip Hop have long been intertwined, so it’s refreshing to hear hip hop producers approach Jazz not through sampling, but by working directly within the genre’s wide‑open framework. Onra and Buddy Sativa pull this off beautifully, crafting a record that feels fresh while carrying a timeless, classic spirit. Love it.

Smiff'n Wessun released this classic album in 1995, which is a classic in the history of Hip-Hop. The album is an wellknown hip-hop classic that spawned such classics as "Bucktown," "Wrekonize," "Sound Bwoy Bureill," and many more. The original album "Dah Shinin'" is now being reissued on cassette in a completely limited edition!　The album contains 18 tracks in total, with bonus tracks added to the original!

The latest mixtape LP, “Even The Devil Smiles,” comes from rapper and producer IDK (Jason Mills).

In celebration of the album’s 20th anniversary, MM..FOOD has been repackaged with all new artwork by Sam Rodriguez! Originally released in 2004, MF DOOM's MM..FOOD is hailed as a classic hip-hop album full of inventive production, remarkable wordplay, and unique themes. Celebrated for its seamless blend of humor, wit, and social commentary, the album ushers listeners into a bizarre world of food-related metaphors, painting a bitterly comedic portrait of a life tainted by vice, violence, and jealousy. It was a brilliant and novel concept that gave DOOM plenty of room to explore the album’s subjects. Throughout MM..FOOD, DOOM embeds complex ideas within seemingly simple narratives. Album opener “Beef Rapp” is a multi-pronged metaphor reminding listeners of the dangers involved in the glorification of conflict, especially within the rap game. “Hoe Cakes” borrows its name from the sweet, hot water cornmeal patties, which he uses as a symbol to rhyme about indulgence and excess. Continuing the motif, DOOM uses the Madlib-produced “One Beer” to fold layers of depth about escapism and ego, while the popular “Rapp Snitch Knishes” critiques the self-incrimination and contradictory behaviors of some rappers. Overall, MM..FOOD is both a social commentary and a piece of social satire, showcasing MF DOOM’s ability to blend serious themes with his unique, playful lyrical style.

In celebration of the album’s 20th anniversary, MM..FOOD has been repackaged with all new artwork by Sam Rodriguez! Originally released in 2004, MF DOOM's MM..FOOD is hailed as a classic hip-hop album full of inventive production, remarkable wordplay, and unique themes. Celebrated for its seamless blend of humor, wit, and social commentary, the album ushers listeners into a bizarre world of food-related metaphors, painting a bitterly comedic portrait of a life tainted by vice, violence, and jealousy. It was a brilliant and novel concept that gave DOOM plenty of room to explore the album’s subjects. Throughout MM..FOOD, DOOM embeds complex ideas within seemingly simple narratives. Album opener “Beef Rapp” is a multi-pronged metaphor reminding listeners of the dangers involved in the glorification of conflict, especially within the rap game. “Hoe Cakes” borrows its name from the sweet, hot water cornmeal patties, which he uses as a symbol to rhyme about indulgence and excess. Continuing the motif, DOOM uses the Madlib-produced “One Beer” to fold layers of depth about escapism and ego, while the popular “Rapp Snitch Knishes” critiques the self-incrimination and contradictory behaviors of some rappers. Overall, MM..FOOD is both a social commentary and a piece of social satire, showcasing MF DOOM’s ability to blend serious themes with his unique, playful lyrical style.

John T. Gast’s 5GT label shells the baddest yet by their secret weapon Xterea, panel-beating aspects of free party tekno D&B and UK steppers with a proper rusty, distorted tang that works a treat - RIYL Muslimgauze, Yann Dub, Carrier.

With scant background info, comparisons between Xterea and his label boss have almost inevitably been made - kinda like loads of artists on Rephlex were presumed to be AFX aliases - but we’re assured that Xterea is not JTG, they just share a thing for the grubbiest subterranean dub rave.

Whatever, their latest is also their strongest, arranging brittlest, nagging drums and murky atmospheres into hypnotic propulsion systems with a dead satisfying sort of unfinished, off-the-cuff, uncommercial quality that hits where it matters.

Their 4th release, after a ’24 debut with Mindseyerecords.xyz, and preceding pair for 5GT, ‘I’ll Call You Later’ is their most substantial in terms of length and locked-in effect. A case in point is the 10 min standout ‘Don’t Shoot the Messenger’, reminding us to the trippiest ends of frenchtek via the neuro pressure of late ’90s D&B, and getting right into the whirring details with a restrained, hands-on dub tactility.

That aesthetic is thoroughly explored with rude swagger across all seven cuts, variously squashed into an industry-dancehall swivel on the tense ‘Playtime’, and spangled in killer electro-dub noise of ‘Mix Up’, thru the serotonin-depleted, up-for-3-days limb-mill of ’Style Like This’ and its dub, to the secret backroom warehouse steez of ‘I Swear That’s X.’

“Corpus Delicti EP” marks the first vinyl release by Mazlika, a Tokyo‑based trackmaker and DJ who is also active as a dancer.

To celebrate 20 years of this incredible album by Masami Akita, we are doing a limited edition gatefold vinyl pressing on baby pink colored vinyl limited to 300 copies worldwide.

Mndsgn (born Ringgo Ancheta) grew up in south New Jersey, raised with Gospel music at church, and B-Boy culture at home. Experimenting with beat-making, he befriended fellow producer Knxwledge and the two formed the influential Klipmode collective (along with Devonwho and Suzi Analogue). Mndsgn's music flourished when he moved to Los Angeles, catching the attention of Stones Throw who released Yawn Zen (2014), an LP of introspective and mostly instrumental beat creations, punctuated by vocal cuts.

Body Wash is his second album for Stones Throw, a full set of realized songs that were only hinted at on Yawn Zen. Influences here include the likes of early SOLAR records material, Leon Sylvers III, Kashif, and Dave Grusin. These artists, Mndsgn says, "embodied that potent feeling in the early 80s boogie/funk/soul/jazz/fusion wave." He adds, "I was also digging back into some early 90s R&B sounds and started really imagining what it would be like if I had mashed the two eras together." He explains Body Wash as "a soul record that plays with nostalgic elements in a very dynamic & positive way. Think about it as a box of crayons for you to draw emotions with."

The album was built around a backstory, a loose narrative thread through which he could filter his unformed ideas. In the narrative, a homeless man encounters a mysterious woman who gives him shelter. She instructs him to bathe with a very peculiar body wash. As he soaks and sinks deeper in a thick lather of this unknown solution, the man finds himself transported to an alternate dimension. Mndsgn describes the story as a vessel "that would allow me to speak on topics that were universally relatable … The story actually became a true outlet for me to address worldly issues with Self." The resulting album also represents a dynamic step forward in songwriting. Without explicitly relating its plot or characters, the album as a whole turns on the story's key theme, the psychedelic, transformative power of love.

ElectroSoul is the most collaborative and personal record yet from GRAMMY Award-nominated producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist DJ Harrison.

Sparked by a sudden health scare in 2024, the album brought the Richmond, VA, native’s close-knit creative community into the studio. The result is a genre-melding testament to healing, recovery, rejuvenation and making the most of the present. Grounded in his Richmond roots and inspired by family, ElectroSoul moves with warmth, purpose, and groove.

Featured artists include Yazmin Lacey, Yaya Bey, Fly Anakin, Pink Siifu, Stones Throw labelmate Kiefer, Angélica Garcia, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and many more.

Madvillain, a super popular hip-hop duo consisting of MF Doom & Madlib, has stocked a cassette version of the monumental masterpiece released by in 2004! This gritty analog texture, the stagnation beats that Madlib keeps throwing in, and the drunken Doom flow just intoxicate the listener. There is no moment like yawning, and a terrifying finish that does not make you feel any gap from beginning to end. Please enjoy one of the centuries that represents hip-hop in the 2000s with the sound quality of cassettes!

Madvillain, a super popular hip-hop duo consisting of MF Doom & Madlib, has stocked a cassette version of the monumental masterpiece released by in 2004! This gritty analog texture, the stagnation beats that Madlib keeps throwing in, and the drunken Doom flow just intoxicate the listener. There is no moment like yawning, and a terrifying finish that does not make you feel any gap from beginning to end. Please enjoy one of the centuries that represents hip-hop in the 2000s with the sound quality of cassettes!

"Drawing" cover, aka "Old Donuts," the unofficial name for the original edition of J Dilla's Donuts 2/LP with an illustrated sleeve, the way the vinyl was originally released in 2006.

"Drawing" cover, aka "Old Donuts," the unofficial name for the original edition of J Dilla's Donuts 2/LP with an illustrated sleeve, the way the vinyl was originally released in 2006.

Sortilège is the new album from esteemed producer and DJ Preservation and ascendant talent Gabe ‘’Nandez. The two artists first linked on Aethiopes, Preservation’s 2022 collaboration with billy woods, where Nandez was featured alongside Boldy James on one of the album’s standout tracks. “Sauvage” became the catalyst for Sortilège, as the New Orleans-based producer and New York-based rapper gradually began exchanging ideas—first long distance, then in February 2024, when Nandez flew to New Orleans for two weeks, ready to work.

“It was smooth, very synergetic,” ‘Nandez explains. “We listened to mad music—Boot Camp Clik, Scaramanga, Cuban Linx—and I was asking questions about all types of shit, trying to soak up game and history, which I did.”

The two also bonded over their shared francophone ancestry: Preservation is half French and ‘Nandez is half Malian. These connections made their way into the music as well, via both aesthetics and sample sources, and that sort of exchange courses through Sortilège, bridging the generational, geographical, and cultural gaps between the two artists with a record that feels a world unto itself. Esoteric, yet blunt and uncomplicated as a fistfight, Sortilège erases the line between urbane and urban. It’s a movie in a lucid dream, A Clockwork Négritude projected against the wall of a construction site. Mixed-use residential.

Tracing this arc, fellow travelers Armand Hammer, Koncept Jack$on, Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko, and billy woods all make appearances. Oh, and there are drums everywhere: drums that will rattle a hooptie and drums that whisper threats. Somehow, over the course of 14 tracks, Preservation seems to find his way to every instrument imaginable—yet each beat has room to breathe. Amidst this breakbeat symphony, ‘Nandez’s unmistakable baritone glides purposefully, ever forward, a bristling warship in troubled waters. Every time the bass thumps, ‘Nandez counterpunches. This is a record for heavyweight speakers and clunky headphones.

Sortilège can be translated as either:

Magical / Supernatural: Act of witchcraft, magical spell, charm, or curse.

Figurative / Literary: Symbolic enchantment, inexplicable fascination, often caused by a person, work of art, or an atmosphere.

We like to think it names the force at work within and between these songs.

Underneath his mysterious metal mask, MF DOOM hides the cachet underground legends are made of. After his first group KMD’s sophomore album Black Bastards was shelved by Elektra in 1994, and his blood brother Subroc — one half of the sibling rap duo — passed away, surviving frontman Zev Love X slowly mutated into the supervillain MC known as MF DOOM, and the rap world is better for it.The 1999 release of Operation: Doomsday marked MF DOOM’s official debut, reintroducing a mysterious figure who would soon become one of underground rap’s greatest voices. Within its 19 tracks, Operation: Doomsday reveals the confluence of DOOM’s tragic past, personal interests and daring creativity. His clever rhymes and remarkable schemes stood out against the landscape, and every sound he touched — from cartoon theme songs, to ‘80s soul, to rap classics and more — got reinterpreted into something brand new and surreal.Decades later, MF DOOM is still celebrated for all facets of his work and influence. In the face of tragedy, DOOM re-infiltrated the rap game on his own terms, and crafted an instant cult classic. Operation: Doomsday stands as a testament to the power of betting on yourself against all odds.