Makin Illa Noize
Yet another spectacular piece of urban obscurity from Chicago. An incredible feat of integrity obsessed grimness, hostility & gauntness running wild through condemned tenements. Pretty much the entire album is bleak, with a louring & sombre production coating every surface. The focal protagonist is Toxic, a devote zealot of an MC with an overriding enmity for forgery, falsehood, compromise & imposters. His two accomplices are Chainsaw & Riot One, also fiercely protective sentinels who repeatedly iterate the death/annulling of Rap/Hip-Hop from the burgeoning G-Funk commoditized adulteration that was cascading out of plush studio-suites the country over at this critical “death-throws” stage of collapsing Rap credibility. Cue eight tracks & two skits crammed with impassioned tirades against “minute made gimmick MC’s”, violence, squalor, strife veracity & an astonishing inner-apex of, as of yet, non-capsized sub-culture that was yet to be swallowed & desecrated thoroughly by the corporate bleach. It’s a fucking religion to these guys & the quality & conviction radiates & bristles absurdly well throughout this absolute diamond of an album. Most of the rhymes are freestyles. It can be very formidable lyrically, but it’s really the flows & the grade-A, indomitable & implacable conviction, craft-intensity & utter devotion that sears with a kind of mad militant purity. “Realness” is clearly sacred to this lot & a thousand essays on how conjuring tremendous value in a horrific environment & shit set of social conditions (the ghettos of Chicago in the mid 90’s weren’t (& still aint) no fuckin’ joke chuckles) that would be celebrated & vaunted all over the globe are easily instigated. Toxic vividly & emphatically prognosticates on the total hollowing & emasculation of Rap that was set to envelope 95% + in the following years. The beats are insane! – grimy, low-light & threatening pretty much through & through with tons of reverb & majorly modified tones that compel a subterranean atmosphere. Many other gnarled Chi-town rappers contribute as the Ill State Assassins, hammering home the deeply defensive realism- obsessed rawness. Chicago seemed to get (& this may well still be the case) very little attention outside of it’s own borders despite an insanely creative lineage & climate. I have not looked into this exclusion or parochial ostracizing… no idea as to why? But I guess the right dicks were not doffed & quality & diversity were not valued as is the usual modus-operandi in this suit infested shit-house of philistine fuckwits & distribution monopolists misers. Whatever atrocious creative stunting & corruption took/takes place, Tha Chamba are beyond-off-the-hook & this album belongs in a fuckin’ museum…HUNT IT DOON!!!
Rekd: 1995
Label: Coroner Records
Don’t Sleep EP
Don’t Sleep followed in 96. It contains two new tunes (it’s actually 8 cuts but they are just different versions of the two) Korrupted & Don’t Sleep, one detailing aggrieved tribulations & the other in the Hardcore idiom with the sombre & eerie production. Grit & gloom, but also total brilliance, creativity & contest. A very’ very special group! Where the fuck they at now?
Rekd: 1996
Label: Coroner Records