Quelle Chris: Deathfame

Quelle Chris has carved a distinct segment for himself on the edges of different hip-hop. His music is as distinctive as it’s capacious, and he’s in all probability one of many solely rappers whose discography incorporates a verse from Roc Marciano and a hook from the Tune-Yards. As he approaches 40, Quelle Chris has deepened his potential to write down perceptive lyrics and developed his expertise as a beatmaker. Current work on the rating for Judas and the Black Messiah has proven the hassle he’s made to stretch his wings, and he’s developed from a really expert MC to a producer polymath. Whereas he’s hardly ever shied away from humor, on his new album DEATHFAME, he balances broad comedy with pointed satire, offering direct political tackle with a looseness that retains all of it from sounding like mere cant.

Collaboration brings Chris right down to earth (long-time producing companion Chris Keys seems on a number of piano-driven tracks and Knxwledge gives a boom-bap beat) however isolation fits him. By creatively overdubbing his vocals, he displays the unsure world round him. Although there’s lengthy been a dubby texture to Chris’ manufacturing, DEATHFAME turns the reverb and echo as much as the purpose of pure abstraction. His phrases nonetheless carry weight and particular which means, however this album is his 808s & Heartbreak, a bit outlined as a lot by its atmosphere and vocal timbre as its lyrics.

Whereas Chris has by no means been afraid to crack jokes, his move right here is significantly extra deadpan, carrying a way of solemnity. He sounds honest when he sings that he’s grateful to be alive on “Alive Ain’t All the time Dwelling,” however his voice slows right down to a stroll by the monitor’s conclusion, as if life’s exhaustion has caught as much as him. His move equally captures the duality of life mirrored within the beat, a relaxing soul keyboard melody cloaked in static and unsettling distortion. The album’s title, repeated by Quelle Chris himself and disembodied voices, hints at a painful recognition of the unspoken goal of the rap trade, the place tragedy is so usually intertwined with business success: “Let these companies sink their fangs in my legacy’s neck earlier than I dip,” he declares on the title monitor.

With a distortion-heavy and nearly vaporwave-like method to sound, the manufacturing on DEATHFAME remembers Actress as a lot because it does Madlib. You may hear the bones of a backpacker-friendly jazz rap palette, however they’ve been scrambled and reassembled right here. The drums on “King In Black” bang like sheets of metallic in a thunderstorm, clanging and slowed, much less chopped and screwed and extra dragged via the mud. A fats double-bass line and free-form piano take part, forming a robotic jazz combo, and Chris pitch-shifts and manipulates his personal voice into 100 completely different instructions. Nonetheless, DEATHFAME by no means loses contact with rap—as twisted and filtered as his voice may change into, Chris nonetheless spits bars over what typically feels like beats. These futuristic environs match the inventiveness of collaborators like Navy Blue and Pink Siifu—it’s like Chris is cosigning the experimental tendencies of a brand new technology. 

The techno of Chris’ native Detroit has usually been related to the town’s historical past of equipment and trade, and whereas DEATHFAME doesn’t sound very like Underground Resistance, it’s arduous to not place the album’s distinctly metallic sound in that context. Voices are weathered and eroded, and the percussion sounds oxidized; the manufacturing embraces the rust and decay of commercial neglect, lending a concrete weight to the summary heaviness of the lyrics. Whereas it might sound like a transmission from a distant universe, there’s no actuality DEATHFAME might come from however our personal.