Chris Crack: ‘Might delete later’ album review- A hit and miss rap game
The attention economy feels schizophrenic. It’s amusing that when we have so many things we can turn our attention towards online- Netflix movies, selfies, news updates on the football team that you follow, the latest invention to tackle humanity’s inability to properly smear cheese evenly on a bread slice….- we feel attention deprived.
It’s like a cruel joke- you are shown all these interesting things that you could potentially consume, but you couldn’t enjoy any of them because you don’t have the necessary ‘mental bandwidth’
Musicians have adapted to this scenario by producing songs that are ever-shorter in length. (The epitome of the art of shrinking music is found in Tik Tok).
This is not always a bad thing- as evinced by the rapper Chris Crack, who has produced a series of albums over the last few months, each featuring songs that often redefine the word ‘short.’
His latest album, ‘Might delete later’ has 15 tracks but the album clocks in at around thirty minutes.
Sespite the super-short format of the songs, they rarely sound monotonous or one dimensional- progression of chords and variances in stylistic motifs abound.
Perhaps most importantly, such mutations feel natural and rarely come across as forced. Which you would know is quite a feat if you generally listen to sub 2 minute songs.
But the same dynamism doesn’t necessary extend to the lyrics.
There are some verses that your mind latches on to almost by itself- what with intricate lyricism and the ideas they convey. But certain other verses fall flat on the face, leaving you with the sense that the hero just landed a soft slap on the villain when a hard punch was called for.
I have discussed this fact before in the pages of this blog: I don’t necessarily understand all of English rap in a song on first listen. And sometimes, even after repeat-listening, certain verses still remain obscure to me.
I would then resort to looking up the lyrics online if I liked the song, and if I didn’t, I would just forget about it.
With this album, I don’t feel that urge rto check out the lyrics even though there are quite a few parts in the songs that are a blank screen for me- because I couldn’t understand the words.
The reason is the mix of lyrical hits and misses that I experienced listening to the parts of the work that I did understand.
But that’s not to say that the album is not worth checking out. Verbal insights the kind which differentiate a great rap album from a good one are perhaps too far and in between here.
But the music is often gripping than not, and Crack remains a compelling voice throughout the album’s runtime, raising and lowering his pitch to accommodate each musical motif with something approaching chameleonic adaptability.
