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February 2023
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![]() ![]() Unlike many poet-turned-MCs, Ladd manages to go off like a motherfucker, and it all ends with a classic scratch breakdown, cut open with more of those damned trilling strings of his. Ladd's rhymes on Afterfuture are at their most conversational, especially in breaks where he casually explains, "I'm gonna steal from the foreign merchant./ For the cinnamon peeler's wife./ Like I was bedding down with Isis."Īs the buzzing keyboard stabs fade out, "Airwave Hysteria" begins, and the rest is swapped for rising strings and faux-Hindu chants, drifting yet again into some funky, bugged-out Casio shit over which Ladd first hits his lyrical stride, MCing with self-assured flow and coming with dense rhyme content to match ("Breakbeats from Thailand down over by the Ku Klux Klan chapter in Croatia/ We've come a long way from migrating crustaceans/ Generations of relations, history of violence/ I talked along in Babylon, next time I'll try silence"). The record starts with "5000 Miles West of the Future," violently switching up from an analog keyboard assault to a sweeping ambient flow and back again, all while jazzy horn progressions seep through the background and make like Sun Ra handwriting. And even though it looks kinda like a Marlboro ad, it's still a dope cover. It's nasty New Orleans bounce with lyrics about listening to bootlegs of the Fall. Ladd's music reflects the artwork with chunky, pharmaceutical beats that sneak past dim strings. It's an awful electrical mess, superimposed onto old building walls. Look at the cover of Mike Ladd's Welcome to the Afterfuture. ![]() Practical application of existing structures just isn't viable in this modern urban landscape of ours. Really the only old shit you see around now is preserved up all untouchable, museum-style. You know the old dystopian prediction that cities of the future would be these huge ramshackle constructions, piled on the buildings of years past? Well, the reason that hasn't happened is that the "new" world would rather throw out the "old" unless they're too poor not to use it. ![]() You know the old dystopian prediction that cities of the future would be these\n\ huge ramshackle constructions, piled on. ![]()
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