Das Racist  – Relax (2011) [Greedhead] // Grade: A

I remember when dudes first started blowing up and I was working at the Мишка store. Heems came by alone a few times at first, and then Victor started coming around. I remember thinking they were cool dudes and I saw one of the first shows they played in NY after the “Combination Pizza/Hut Taco Bell” shit took off. “These guys get too drunk for me,” was the first thing I thought when I saw them play. To be honest, I’ve kept up with most of the stuff they’ve put out, but I was never entirely sold on dudes’ music until this record. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve had some jams (“Haha JK” goes too hard), but for the most part their music has left me feeling like something was lacking. Whatever that something was though it came through, because Relax has definitely shown Das Racist in a new light for me. The record is everything that I’ve come to expect from them, and something extra.

There is change here, but it’s subtle. Basically the life that Victor and Heems have created for themselves through rapping has now become a feedback loop affecting their raps. And this is all for the better. They’re like idealistic fat kids selling chocolate bars, then using the money to invest in a chocolate bar factory, and then refining their fatness to be made entirely of chocolate. Dudes’ raps are somewhat bizarre, and the success they’ve seen has changed their lives, and now their lives are somewhat bizarre. In the contemporary sense. The raps were always kind of sensational, and now that their lives are more sensational than the average person, the raps seem to just be getting better in an incubator of fuckless wild shit.

In a more explicit sense I think this record just came together a lot better than previous efforts. Good length, good balance, good variety, all that. I would imagine that earlier stuff was probably either less fulfilling, or less enabled. I mean the previous two records are the efforts of a group in ascent, probably scrambling around a bit more, and while Das Racist probably have a long fruitful career ahead of them, Relax somehow feels like an arrival. The record is coming out on Heems’ Greedhead label, so these dudes are entirely at the helm of this project. And that’s not to say they weren’t before, but on top of congratulating the music, there’s a whole infrastructure unseen that we should also be applauding.

I was really surprised, and compelled by the songwriting on here. The hooks are sweet but not saccharine, and while there is a consistent vibe across the whole album it varies and pauses right, and remains captivating. Their raps definitely shine here too as they run through a pretty wide range of — mostly more chilled out — cadences. The only real explicitly hip hop things on the record are the rap guests (El-P, Danny Brown, and Despot) and Kool AD and Heems’ references to hip hop. Other than that this is 2 young United States Citizens making the music that has become the voice of our age in a way that pleases their unique tastes — and they’re tasteful dudes. Their style has precedent in stuff like Dr. Octagon, Grand Buffet, Restiform Bodies, Phoenix Orion, Ghostface, Bleubird, Noah 23, and more recently Lil’ B, so it’s not like the free disassociation and wild tangents is anything new, but they make it their own. Relax is zooted weirdo rap like only the brown men of Das Racist can make it. Props for these fellas, they’ve created something on their own, and they’re holdin on to it, and it’s way dope.

- Zachg