Squadda B – Back $ellin Crack [Green Ova] // Grade: B+

“Rap game illusion I be seein’ the shit” At this point maybe you don’t know Squadda’s name yet. Or maybe you do? At this point it’s difficult for me to tell how the rest of the world is feelin about all this rap music I’ve been writing about. On top of my own lack of perspective though, it would seem that the rest of the world’s predictability is collapsing. It’s tumultuous times in hip hop, and with Danny Brown’s modest amount of success this year, I can’t tell if it’s because the tastemakers are all here right now, or if the world is paying attention of its own accord. The Wave is slowly growing, slowly rising, and Squadda is one of its most prominent faces. But, until this release there wasn’t such a cogent touchpoint for this enigmatic and irreverent half of The Greatest Duo Ever.

You can tell Squadda doesn’t care, you can hear it in his voice, and if you pay attention to his words you’ll hear him talk about his obligation to rapping. But in spite of what amounts to a disaffected patina, his heart is in it, and so beneath the unaffected exterior is a deeply inquisitive, emotional, and contemplative man. In making his art Squadda persuades that duality to occupy the same space, but it never quite congeals. I mean it all gels if we’re talkin’ about whether or not this music vibes, but in terms of the whole caring/not caring dynamic, there is no closure, no resolution. Squadda doesn’t balance those elements in some recognizable way. Much like his beats leave us all suspended in the ether of sound, his raps leave us suspended in the ether of this duality. Squadda doesn’t show us the end, and he doesn’t give us the answers. Squadda shows us the unending path, shares tales of his time on the path, and offers insight to the realizations he’s had along the way. He doesn’t take us there, he gets us there. Feel me?

“The most normal life I lead is out in the streets,” is the opening line from the hugely irreverent “Say That To Say This.” It doesn’t rhyme, and the structure is not noticeably song-like. It’s a flood of non sequiturs linked only by the phrase “I say that to say this.” But despite the fact that on paper it sounds less like hip hop than Justin Bieber at the BET cypher, on wax (so stupid to say that, but in a ‘so stupid to say that’ that I can’t pass up on the opportunity type of way) it sounds Illmatic as fuck (I don’t even like Illmatic much — I prefer It Was Written — but it works great as an adjective here). But, it doesn’t end there because if you’re listening with a careful and informed ear it’s really difficult to draw the line at what Squadda doesn’t sound like. But Squadda knows what he doesn’t sound like. And he tells us.

“We had some labels holler but we ain’t wanna sign.” I mean, he doesn’t outline exactly what that entails, but it means that Squadda knows what he’s not. And he steers clear of it. But, if you come to this record trying to pin down what Squadda is, you’re going to walk away frustrated, or with a really long beard and nails and shit cause you stood there for ages. Look at it like this, Squadda is in the room, but what matters is that he’s int he building. When you stop checking all the rooms and just listen, it’s obvious where he’s at. I mean, he’s a bonafide producer, but he only made one beat on the record. But the one beat he made is the “one of these things is not like the other,” and it’s dripping in just as much irreverence as it could possibly hold. If you’re paying attention Squadda is doing everything, but if you’re looking for him Squadda is vacuous. On Back $ellin Crack Jack Skeleton himself evokes one of the most atavistic artistic dualities we know as Earthly beings. Like smoke, he vacillates in the balance between existing and not existing, and to our benefit he does it in rap. You the man doggie.

- Zachg