
The Micro-Chop Daily X #6 — Mutant Academy Edition
A Micro-Chop playlist featuring 10 hand-picked instrumentals — every single day for an entire year.
When you try to write about music for a living, the first thing you realize is how little you know about music. Even if you make the leap to music journalism with a certain level of confidence about your background knowledge, you quickly realize that your total understanding is equivalent to a snowflake in an avalanche.
I’ve been listen to music obsessively for the better part of my 35 years on planet earth and I’m constantly humbled at how limited my scope and understanding of recorded music is. And in the two plus years since I first started Micro-Chop, I’ve been inundated with more good music than I can handle. With only two ears and 24 hours in a day, I can’t keep up with all the albums and songs out there that are worth listening to.
But every once in a while a collective, crew, or label brings something so different and distinct to the table that I obsessively dive into their catalog for days and weeks on end. This was the case when I first discovered Mutant Academy, a crew of mostly Richmond, Virginia-based rappers and producers who make music unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.
My entry point for Mutant Academy music came when I first heard Tuamie’s The Gift: Volume Four release on Street Corner Music. When “Call The Coroner” came on, my head exploded. So I dove into his Bandcamp page and explored some of his other work. I couldn’t get enough of his sample flips and drum patters, which are unlike any other producer that I’m aware of.
From there, I caught wind of Mutant Academy producer ewonee . and Jalal Salaam’s boundary-pushing and rule-breaking Past Lives collaboration — also on Street Corner Music. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take me several listens to really “get” this project, but those are often my favorite albums — the ones that I can’t quite wrap my head around at first. When I interviewed ewonee . about his Radiance album afterwards and he told me about layering field recordings behind chopped up drum breaks, I knew Mutant Academy was a crew I had to explore further.
From there I discovered Foisey.’s Byrds album (yes, also on Street Corner Music) and eventually interviewed him about it. Between the Kanye vocal samples over gospel piano chops to an insane drumless vocals sliced and diced to perfection to close out the album, I was immediately hooked. I also found the work of BSTFRND — another standout producer in a crew filled with standout producers. His memorizing “Sprites” and “thirtyseven” cuts were instant winners in my book.
That lead me to Mutant Academy MCs like Fly Anakin, Koncept Jack$son, Henny L.O., and Big Kahuna OG. Which then took me on a journey through the all-Tuamie produced Emergency Raps series. Mutant Academy rappers are in the running for best album and song titles out there and I love how they throw the rule book for writing a rap records out the window on most of their releases. This is an all instrumental playlist so none of the aforementioned MCs are included above, but you should definitely check them out.
I hope the instrumentals included here motivate you to check out the rest of the work from Mutant Academy producers. Their catalogs are deep and not all of their stuff is on Spotify, so stopping by their Bandcamp pages is a very worthwhile endeavor.
The sixth playlist in this series features the following artists, with each name hyperlinked to bring you directly to their Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or website: Foisey., BSTFRND, Unlucky Bastards, ewonee ., Tuamie.
Be on the lookout for The Micro-Chop Daily X #7 dropping tomorrow.
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