January 25, 2019
Sony UK
1xLP
Some Rap Songs is amongst the strangest, most idiosyncratic hip hop albums ever committed to wax. Despite housing fifteen unique songs, it clocks in at just over 23-minutes, and whirls by in a delirious, unsettling blur not so different from its album art. Hugh Masekela and James Baldwin find themselves worked into its tightly woven fabric. It's more dense than albums three-times the length. And above all, it is a stellar rap album, one that could only have been made by (arguably) the best rapper of his generation, and a songwriter so justifiably convinced of his talent that any iconoclasm can be easily reconciled. It slots right up there with MF DOOM, Aesop Rock, and other lyrically inclined geniuses who had mastered the art of rapping to such a degree, that all there was left to do was tear it apart.