Agallah Don Bishop x Duke Westlake ft. Spliff Hemingway & Lil Eto - The Ill Blend

After you abandon a gmail inbox long enough, you feel like an archaeologist. Specifically, an alien archaeologist. How did this ever happen? Who the fuck are these people? It’s not much of an enigma, though: we’re all here to die trying to get famous.

Enter Agallah Don Bishop. He’s big shit. Like most folks who started too soon and wanted too much, he’s changed names a cool dozen times now. His latest incarnation is a lifestyle-branded collaboration with Duke Westlake. Like so many attempts at a second act in American Life, nobody seems to care much.

What a rapping-ass rapping motherfucker does at this point is pretty interesting. You’re stuck down here with the locals acts & has-beens & nobody-faces now, a classic Joseph Campbell Underworld Initiation.

Turns out, Old Boy has lost none of his venom or energy. He comes in chopping right from the jump, but the more you listen, the more you can hear the seams in the stitchwork...there’s just nothing new here. This isn’t a problem, either. 90’s revival aesthetics are hot as balls right now.

The bars keep coming hard and fast and professional, but it’s paint-by-numbers, more remix than resurrection. You could find a couple dozen Agallah verses from the Bush era that sound the same -- and flex the same flow patterns, too. Few of us grow much past 25 years old.

Strangely, there are features.

First up is Spliff Hemingway, who delivers an authentic dose of that East Coast shit. Since kids are pretty simple these days, dude drives the point home by rapping in a damn blizzard. He’s an earnest disciple and a competent student. Hell, a competitive student - at least on this track, he wants it more.

That shit fits nicely, but this Lil Eto shit is fucking weird, period. Sounds like when local autists rush the stage for open mic and make life awkward for everyone. It’s just as much fun to sit through on Youtube. This cat should find some EDM gothcore producers and drop his epic debut LP instead of clogging up perfectly good rap tracks with bullshit like this.

All in all, solid product but I don’t feel fed. “Authenticity” has become an increasingly low standard. At this point, it doesn’t mean a fucking thing. The 90’s sucked. The 90’s deserved to die. Agallah, on the other hand, is probably good for another decade of head-nodding rappity-rap like this.