Philly MC King Shampz Releases “Dawn of the Dead” with Dead Wrong Records
Album stands as interesting hybrid of styles and influences to create new sound for the 2020s
Like all articles on The New Haberdasher, this story is presented to you for free. If you like what I do, consider supporting my work with a small monetary contribution at my Patreon and thank you.
I can often trace so much music from the present back into the apex of American musical culture in the 1990s. That period saw one of the greatest bursts of musical diversity ever known in the history of American music, which can be held in parity with the Jazz Age of the 1920s and the development of rock in the 1960s. The 1990s saw the the creation of proto versions of the musical trends that have defined popular music in this country during the last three decades. It also saw expansion of established styles into new communities, or, more correctly spoken, wider exposition of those areas’ various music styles to a mainstream of the American public.
In this light, we can begin to talk about the musical style known as trap, which was developed in the early 2000s from influences already present in Hip Hop dating back to the mid 90s and earlier. I must acknowledge some controversy around this term. Some will insist that trap is a kind of rap, and therefore holds a kinship with the hip hop genre. Others, including major trap artist Travis Scott will insist that trap and hip hop are no longer related, and only have rapping in common, but that the musical style is even created differently than hip hop. Some will call trap a successor of hip hop, suggesting that hip hop is dead and trap has entirely replaced it.
I tend to agree with Scott in this debate: Trap is structurally different from Hip Hop. Rap is the common link, and trap used to be a form of hip hop but it has since become something totally different. Unfortunately, we are less than 20 years out from the creation of Trap, and even fewer decades away from the split between trap and hip hop (which I will argue happened less than 10 years ago.) With so little time, it is impossible, I think to have a complete historical perspective on the question to know for sure. But I think current trends are dragging trap music out of the hip hop genre and into something more of the EDM genre with rapping instead of singing for the lyricism. Already, the topical material covered by trap artists, which is almost all about material, money, drugs and women is further away from the conscious cultural roots of hip hop, and closer to the club lyrics, and even though it is still an emerging genre, the trap sound is being co-opted by non rappers like Ke$ha, Ariana Grande and even Taylor Swift, to be played in clubs rather than at hip hop shows.
It is worth it therefore to explore a bit of the evolution of the emerging genre of trap before we get into the review of the new Dead Wrong Records album Dawn of the Dead, which was released on December 18, 2020.
To find the roots of the trap, we need look no further than the Roland TR-808 drum machine. The 808 was a synthesized drum machine that was invented in 1980. It very quickly became the sound of old school hip hop, being adopted as early as 1982 by artists like Afrika Bambaataa on Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock”. Listening to the rapid fire tings of the closed high hats and the synthesized snares of “Planet Rock”, you can draw a direct line between this early use of drum machines through artists like early Public Enemy/Bomb Squad Production on songs like 1987’s “Raise the Roof” and Beastie Boys’ 1986 track “Brass Monkey”. As quick as the 808 became ubiquitous, Djs and production teams behind the most cutting edge music produced in NYC began turning to old jazz and blues loops to create beats and those who became legendary left the 808 behind.
In the 90’s the use of the 808 fell off as hip hop producers moved more towards sampling analog breakdowns and beats to build their songs. The 808 held on down south, though, including in songs like 2 Live Crew’s 1990 protest track “Banned in the USA”. Meanwhile hiphop continued to evolve, entering full glory on both the East and West Coasts, with massive artists like Tupac Shakur, the Notorious BIG, the Fugees, Dr. Dre, Wu Tang Clan, and Nas making genre defining music. During the 1990s, the 808 just sounded antiquated more often than not, due to its synthesized sound and relative sonic limitations, especially compared to (largely uncleared) sampling methods.
But the 808 was not done with Hip Hop. Sampling began presenting major challenges to music producers in the 1990s, as more and more of these uncleared samples came up against copyright and IP laws, and fewer and fewer underground artists could get access to markets if they used uncleared samples. So, producers began returning to drum machines and synthesizers to produce music for MCs to rap over. The 808 came back into fashion, and rap and hip hop artists rediscovered the sound, especially the ability to speed up the snare and the high hats on the drum machines. Southern artists associated with Crunk (which was basically club music as seen, for example, on Usher, Lil John and Ludacris’ “Yeah”) or those more closely associated with Dirty South hip hop in general, including Outkast with the song “The Way You Move”, eventually turned back to the 808, though many times it was samples of the old 808 beats slowed down to allow MCs perform their fast-rap lyrics associated with the Southern style.
As the Dirty South was accepted into mainstream rap and hip hop and gained an equal place at the table which they had been explicitly denied by more established acts in the North East and Southern California in the 90s, a new style was bubbling up behind the scenes. There is some debate about who invented the sound of trap: Some claim Gucci Mane invented the sound, and he is certainly associated with the earliest major success with the sound. But I tend to agree that TI, from Atlanta, first developed the sound as a street variant of the Dirty South sound that was huge at the time.
For example: TI argued on Netflix’s Hip Hop Evolution, that he was messing around with the speed of the hats and the snares on an old 808 that he had acquired somehow, and he kept speeding the samples up and the rapping over them. The lyrics focused on stuff street kids knew about: dealing drugs, and various other nefarious, often violent crimes, rollin on 24s, and discussion about the hood, which the mainstream artists seemed to glamorize but had lost real ties to as they blew up. It was all done in a “thick” southern accent which Northerners were entirely unused to hearing. We can also be sure that Gucci Mane released his first record in 2005, while TI released a record in 2003 CALLED Trap Muzik on Grand Hustle Records.
Whether it was Gucci Mane, or TI, or whether both of them developed takes on the sound independently, is really unimportant. We can be sure that by the release of Trap Muzik, trap as a form had been invented and by the time Gucci Mane dropped his debut album, Trap House, trap music was here to stay. Since then, the production sound of trap music has remained fairly true to its roots, though there has been some innovation in the production by artists like Lil Wayne, who, in the mid 2010s reached the pinnacle of trap production on albums like FWA and I Am Not a Human Being II. During this period, the lyrics stayed topical, the 808 still banged and snapped in rapid fire, but the production seemed to enter more of a dreamy, lush sound that had largely eluded earlier trap that was often focused on more sparse, sample driven beats. Artists which were working on trap during this period may not have known it, but they were also working on cutting edge digital production which would soon be captured by an infinite number of independent musicians, and disseminated world wide via music streaming and sharing services. This was the dawn of the Sound Cloud era, which influenced a number of subgenres entirely outside of rap and hip hop, such as indie pop and bedroom pop which would come later in the decade.
Two artists who had a tremendous influence on trap music and dragged it, quite against its will out of both the underground and out of the Hip Hop genre altogether were Drake and Migos. Drake, as a musician began his musical career with mixtapes, but his debut record Thank Me Later, was a solid rap record that only lightly hinted at trap. It contained none of the trap speed kits, though both TI and Lil Wayne, as well as rap MCs like Nikki Minaj and Jay Z are featured on the on the record. His later music tends to fall more into trap and mumble rap categories, the latter being a form of music which seeks to mimic the sound of MCs on depressant drugs, especially promethazine, called “lean” when it is mixed with codiene and grape koolaid. His genre became known as emo rap, and he adopted the production techniques of Trap. And while some of his stuff is alright, the problem comes when countless artists sought to create music that sounded just like his.
Migos on the other hand have always been associated with Trap and Mumble, since the beginning. Their greatest contribution to rap was development of the “Migos Flow” which is lyrical triplets over trap beats. The method, which itself has been imitated by numerous artists to the point that seems to be the generic flow now played on the radio, involved rhyming triplets over a slowed down beat, to allow the MCs to pack a huge number of words and syllables into a relatively normal length song. Meanwhile, the production of songs with that “Migos Flow” on it also contain heavily autotuned production and huge gaps between triplets which are frequently filled with random exclamations like “Yeah” and “Woo” and “Damn!” or “brrrr….” The Migos Flow can be traced to songs like “Versace” on their 2013 record Young Rich N — as.
Migos aren’t the first MCs to use the triplets: instead, they elevated the triplets to the standard. Now, we can hear that same exact flow in trap songs by artists like Drake, Kanye West, Meek Mill, and etc. Matter of fact, various videos trace the use of the Migos flow in popular rap, and it is so closely associated with trap as a music style that if you hear a trap song from the last six years, you can almost bet it will have that Migos flow attached to. Which is unfortunate, if you happen to think that individual artists ought to try to have their own sound that makes them unique.
I am not even going to mention “Mumble rap” anymore than I already have, except to say I don’t have anything positive to say about the style of delivery. It is often built over generic trap beats, and delivered using the Migos flow, and is generally nihilistic. It is the exact opposite of conscious Hip Hop, and if anything makes the case that trap and Hip Hop are only distantly related, it is the plague known as Mumble Rap. Thankfully, it appears that at least some of the Mumble set is growing up and making different sounding music: I offer the Post Malone song “Circles” as a tentative example of if not a sign of life or some hint of creativity in that sub-sub genre, at least some evolution in some of its artists, but to be fair, that song is not in anyway a rap song of any kind. It is almost a modern rock song. There have been a few examples of interesting music that are at least tied in some way to that category, but none interesting enough to get into now.
This brings me to a week and a half ago and West Philadelphia's King Shampz’ new project, his record label’s release of Dawn of the Dead, produced, if I am not mistaken, by Shampz’ brother and artistic partner Azzan. At first listen, my impression was that this was a trap record, while at least some of Shampz’ earlier music is more of the older boom bap sound. Given the history and development of Trap as its own genre, it is fair to say then, that this is the result of a lot of history and development in music, especially the evolution of rap in the 21st Century.
I’ll start by saying, if you like Trap, you will love this record. Thematically the lyrics are on point with the old gritty topics that early Trap artists used to talk about: the MCs on the Album, including King Shampz, Azzan, Frio, Def Soulja, Rxdiio Rxh, Pretty Bulli and Blak talk about hard topics, a violent street life, and chasing money, and those topics are as old in rap as any other topics. Topically, the lyrics speak about familiar stuff, and certainly stuff which has always been associated with the early, underground sound of Trap that TI and Gucci Mane were working with while Outkast had moved on from cooking rock with baking soda to shaking it like a Polaroid picture — these topics are topics that poor folks from cities know all about and can relate to. Fine.
But the thing that struck me most was how much like an earlier form of hip hop this record sounds to me. Many of you may not remember an old band called Onyx. But Onyx was, and still is, a hardcore hip hop act, and there is nobody that could dispute that. Other artists which would fit into that category are groups like Run DMC, Das Efx, Nas, and Wu Tang Clan, whose lyrics were always gritty and grimy as hell. Yes, the delivery is not that generic Migos flow I talked about: its not even Southern. It is a sound which is more closely associated with DC and NYC, in other words the Northeast. Hardcore artists outside of the Northeast could include the Geto Boys from Texas, Ice T out in LA, Too $hort and E-40 in the Bay Area, and Schooly D in Philly.
A lot of hardcore hiphop broadcast many of the same themes that Gangsta Rap and later Trap would employ, but there was always almost an explicit social context to it: while it talked about guns and drugs on many occasions, it also talked about society in a larger sense. This social context is what kept it in the hip hop genre: these artists had a message, and it was often found within allegories and stories they they had actually experienced and were talking about in rhythmic poetry on their records.
As I listened to this particular label album, I made this connection with the older Hardcore tradition, which aesthetically sounds different than the trap music I was currently listening to, but put the record in a whole new light for me. When I was talking with King Shampz about this album, he mentioned that his goal was to bring the various sounds together, the old and new schools of rap, the northern and Southern styles of music and production together, to create a new sound, which is not one thing or the other, but is all that mixed up into a sound that belongs to this set of MCs. And that makes it unique.
I think he and his production team did just that on Dawn of the Dead. They took this sound which is almost exclusively associated with Southern musicians, and which has been developed within the last 20 years, and dropped this old school hardcore flow over the top of it. There are a couple hints to the more modern rap styles in the lyrics, in places, but I cannot get over how much the flow ties back to the late 80’s- early 90s kind of Hip Hop too, and to be completely honest, this is really the highlight of the record for me.
Aesthetically, the production jumped out at me early on. A lot of trap sounds cheap. This production here though is quite professional sounding. The levels on the boards, and the overall sound of the record is very modern, with the bass up front, but not overpowering the MC. It’s not as cinematic as some of the stuff I referred to above by artists like Lil Wayne, but this is fine, because I think Wayne was working on something else entirely on his records than these MCs are. The 808 is prevalent all over the record, as to be expected on a trap record, but there are also some sampling and sequencing too. The sparse but well-made production tends to highlight the gritty lyrical delivery.
Some of the most interesting production is on the tracks “Hot Shit” and “Everything”, which focuses on the a dope flow from the MC Frio in the second verse that is certainly one of the standouts on the album. I also appreciated the production on “Wave Shit” which had some orchestration in a strange cut up sample that is actually evocative of waves. These interesting tracks hint at the future of the artists and the producer on this label, as they continue to develop and evolve their unique sound. Overall the production is clean and sparse, and the lyrics are not muddy or mumbly. Nor, I am happy to report, does this crew lean on auto-tune: It’s straight up and definitely keeps that underground sound which is more typically associated, in more modern days, with hip hop and less with trap.
As for the performances on the record, I will say, hands down, my favorite track is “Certified” with lyrics by MC Pretty Bulli. I am a fan of female MC’s especially ones that are rugged as hell. When the Ladies hold their own and talk as much shit on the mic as their male counterparts, I think that is an positive addition to rap. The song is straight up braggadocious, and is also one of those songs where you listen to it and appreciate the lyrical construction and the similes with a smile on your face, because you realize that by the time you catch up, the MC is already a block ahead of you. Lines like “So I’mma keep the gully in my skully” and “I keeps it all about my bills/ for real; just call me Hillary Rodham…” made me laugh when I heard it the first time. I gotta say, props to Dead Wrong for putting this MC on the record.
I also appreciated the flows by King Shampz himself: As I said, that reminds me of Onyx who were among my favorite hip hip bands back in the day (because they were both Hardcore, and because they were associated with thrash band Biohazard), and really hearing his work at the beginning set the tone for how I would hear the rest of the record. I appreciate how he didn’t go the route that so many other artists on trap songs have gone by adopting those triplets which sound so played out these days, but stuck to that older and unique style of flow which ties this very current album to its roots. Listening to his earlier music, you can see that he has one foot in both the hip hop world, as well as one in the more prevalent trap world, and I think those influences play well together on this record.
Overall, I am glad I got the chance to meet King Shampz who turned me on to this album by his label, and hear this record. I don’t often listen to trap music, because the newer stuff almost all sounds exactly the same to me, and I am so turned off by mumble, that I always find myself returning to music that is as conscious as it possibly can be after I hear it, but this record was a nice surprise for me, and there are certainly many standout moments on Dawn of the Dead, even for a fan of Golden era stuff such as myself.
In summary, if you like trap music, give this record a try, because you will like it. If you want to check out what some good folks in Philly are working on, and see a project that aims at bridging a lot of divides that have long existed in rap and hip hop, this record is also for you. As I mentioned, it takes that old school Hardcore style and drops it over the Trap beats, and bridges northern and southern styles in the hometown of so much excellent music already, where so many great musicians have come from, that being Philadelphia PA. It points toward the future while keeping rooted in the present and conscientiously referencing the past. It is certainly worth at least a spin. If you are into mumble rap, I’d say, this record will not appeal to you, at all. But then again, if you are into mumble rap, you probably stopped reading this article a long time ago.
If you want to check out more of King Shampz’ and other artists on Dead Wrong Records, check out their collection on SoundCloud. You can get ahold of Shampz directly on Twitter or Instagram.
And now, without further ado: Here’s Dead Wrong Records’ December 2020 release, Dawn of the Dead.
Like all articles on The New Haberdasher, this story is presented to you for free. If you like what I do, consider supporting my work with a small monetary contribution at my Patreon and thank you.
