Few rappers make use of vignettes like Sideshow. He’s an unflinchingly private rapper—which is saying one thing, contemplating he retains firm with MIKE, Mavi, and Navy Blue—however he delivers his narrative via piecemeal snapshots. The Washington D.C.-via-Ethiopia rapper has favored this strategy since his 2020 debut Farley and hasn’t veered removed from it since, selecting to render his visage rather less blurry every time he refines his craft. On his newest undertaking Wegahta Tapes Vol. 1., Sideshow burrows additional into his sound, looking for readability within the tales and regrets that cloud his thoughts.
On the opener “Wegahta’s Brother,” he floats from existential anguish to recollections of shifting medicine to pay hire, spinning the block the place his cousin was gunned down, and shopping for Japanese denim. Although these moments aren’t straight related, they don’t really feel like non-sequiturs. These fragments of reminiscence bleed into one another, making a panorama of Sideshow’s life in all its melancholy splendor. Sideshow’s raps aren’t overly flowery or poetic, sticking strictly to the model of dead-eyed reporting of rappers like Vince Staples. However in contrast to Vince, who modifications his move and vitality ranges on a dime, Sideshow delivers each bar with a muted deadpan sincerity.
Medicine are on the periphery of almost each tune, and he treats the promoting of them as a numbing however vital means to an finish. Close to the top of the Proof-produced “Henrik Clarke Kent,” he goes from bragging about revenue margins together with his companion to solemnly recounting a time when he served medicine to his auntie. Paranoia from dealing seeps into even his most trusted relationships. On “S95-Certain,” he raps, “Half my niggas robbers, half ’em scammers; all of them killers/All my brothers students, some in faculty and jail/However I can’t inform who stable, who gon’ rob me or swap.” Sideshow pulls in so shut you could scent the rubber bands wrapped round stacks of cash and listen to the vehicles idling exterior his block.
Sideshow’s voice might not fluctuate usually, however his ear for beats retains the sounds of Wegahta Tapes contemporary and eclectic. Loops and percussion–courtesy of MIKE (“Wegahta’s Brother”), Grimm Doza (“Lunchin”), and Roper Williams (“Rhodes to Rox,” “HP Sport”)–rotate and simmer like a rotisserie rooster on a spit. The beats for closing tracks “Sneeky Steps” and “SALT KILLS SNAILS” are outliers that embrace candy-colored keyboards and quicker drum programming, however they’re combined low sufficient to match the remainder of the album’s subdued palette. Sideshow catches flows over all of them effortlessly, his musical wanderlust providing as a lot journey and hazard because the dilapidated D.C. streets he walks down.
It doesn’t matter what beat he’s rapping over or what reminiscence he’s unearthing, Sideshow stays a grounded and sobering storyteller. It takes a sure stage of conviction to start out an album by refuting the existence of heaven whereas nonetheless holding out hope for a greater tomorrow, and that’s the hat trick he pulls off. There’s little doubt that he’s extra content material to be touring the nation and that includes on Alchemist data as a substitute of being caught up within the streets, however so long as these pictures linger in his head, he’s prepared to make use of them to exorcize his demons.
