“I’m drama freeee (yeah) I’m lovin’ meee (yeah ) / be a queen / BE A KING / SPREAD YOUR WIIINGS” It was a chill mood when I walked into Serious Cartoons Records & Tapes to the smell of tacos and kiefy pre-roll for the Noa James / Nuglife listening party. Lesa J was there as ever being brilliant and facilitating new people meeting. Phantom Thrett had been so kind as to open his doors and cook while everyone soaked in the new album. I’ve only met Nuglife a couple times but he’s a really bright soul and fun to kick it with. It’s wild how Noa is always talking about something substantial with whoever is posted with him on a couch – the more I speak with him and hear his work the more it’s clear to me that this is a man very aware of the preciousness of time.
Their new album, The Majestic Travels of Orcamane and OGie, is a spiritual sequel to The Adventures of Young Orca, an IE classic that is now unbelievably over a decade old. It fits too – it’s chill, stony, melodic, positive and seeking of common ground between souls and artists. The intro’s synth sirens remind one of whale calls- Nuglife understand the James paradigm. Noa’s voice has been evolving from his grizzly bear growl of his early career to a more zen rap crooner of the 2020s and the album’s intro “Orcamane” is a great example of where his voice stylings are now and how subtle and thorough Nuglife's synergy with him is. Noa listened graciously as I shared my critiques and faves – I loved the Mescal and Cam Archer songs, the harder stuff near the end was less my thing but still really catchy and James is undeniably good at it. Berserk and Juggernaut continue the chronicling of Noa’s ever gradually increasing descent into the world of nerdcore while providing a positive space to crack concrete in. Noa’s ability to toggle between experimentation and musically chill comfort food is priceless and the triumph of control over one's demons and the emanating of positivity and generosity is an epic triumph. I've been listening back to James' older works and on each album he balances the beautiful and the darkness -in this album the heroes have returned to the shire in peace and success. Odyssean even.
“I just wanna roll up/ just wanna po’ up”
Nuglife’s beat tape The Beat Dispensary is more of a compilation than a beat tape and it feels like a great immediate follow-up to Majestic Travels - chill thick beats with lots of So Cal all-stars from the BrickToYaFace and EOTR Networks and beyond. A longer record with lots of Noa throughout, it’s a wonderful stony companion-piece to majestic travels. The Noa pieces are like motivational mantras that reflect the comfortable synergy the two have developed. The theme playing off the “dispensary” setting is fun and funny from the Rasta Doorman intro the songs that continue to play on the concept like “The Love Dispensary”. EOTR members Zzay and Don't Sleep are standouts on a collection of stellar and effective collaborations. When you consider his elegant and lush EP with Zzay in addition to these works it’s wild to think how much this cat Nuglife has done before hitting age 25 – he was one to look out for, now he’s one to listen to.
Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is staff writer for JooseBoxx, a youth hip-hop and poetry tutor, and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com
"Bankin' off this rap shit / forever with these flows and this Peyote Cactus"
Having lived in Fontana for
the decade during which I transitioned from adolescent to young adult before
having lived in San Bernardino for the last decade does an interesting thing to how you understand the East Los Angeles /
Inland Empire milieu...you can actually get to BoyleHeights in less than an hour from Fontana when you take the
10. A lot of people in the western parts of L.A.County think of anything east of East
Los as rather “Inland” covering vast areas like San Dimas,
Montclair, Pomona
and others that exist in a sort of interesting limbo to those in the So Cal
know. On a rainy Saturday morning in January I dipped out to Viva Mescal’s EOTR
studios. When I arrived he was dragging just a bit, having had a
birthday/record release celebration the night prior.
Mescal has been my crew and I’s
vision of the future of Latin L.A. hip-hop since he whupped our collective
asses in a massive performance contest in West
Covina in 2015 and started booking us for various
shows in the year subsequent. He and his crew EOTR have kept boom-bap fresh
while showcasing diverse progressive professional music in major venues with
top-acts like Murs and Felipe Esparza from East Los to Europe.
One rolls up to the automated gate at
their First Street
studio in BoyleHeights and it feels like the Rebels on
Yavin IV waving in allied freighters. After getting lost like a dweeb in their
nondescript hallways Penner and other EOTR homies kindly point me in the
direction of Mescal’s studio even though I’ve been here like 4 times before at
least. An honest and communicative collaborator, Mescal engineers a recording
of a song I’m working on produced by Yohalmo for my first solo album. Both of
us familiar with these motions, we have a satisfactory set of layers within 45
minutes and have time to get some pho and visit the dispensary Zzay works at.
"keep it to yourself / if it's negative..."
The
large pho combo is fire and Mescal dishes on how busy he is trying to achieve
and represent for his city and families. He’s engineering, recording new music, making a video for every
song on his new album to name just a few things on his plate. He says he’s shooting the next morning with a guy who
was working an a Hopsin video while we were in the stu. His latest video, “Peyote
Cactus” having garnered most of 10,000 views in the first month of it's release is a good indicator that he’s not just saying shit. “People
don’t have attention spans anymore and that’s okay. You don’t gotta hype up
some shit for 6 weeks before you drop it. – ‘got a project coming out’ – okay? Cool?
Just give it to people. Just give it to them. No need to sit on it forever.”
Zzay brought some sunshine into a rainy day and rolled us all a blunt while
we visited her shop and caught up about video shoots and newly discovered
mutual friends. She’s making visuals for her stellar new 4-song cycle producedby NugLife Solstice. As someone who’s
followed Zzay from the outset of her recording endeavors I’ll always have a
soft spot for the spirited growing young woman who rapped and sang her real
thoughts over hip-hop soul as she found herself but the Solstice EP finds her a woman so confident in her groove that it’s
a Throne now; NugLife is a wildly melodic producer but knows how to make
productions that keep the performer front and center. With more upbeat ideas and spiritually conscious lyrics from EOTR's resident songstress than ever before, the EP goes down easier
and more smoothly than any of her other projects, a smart snack of posi-neo-soul
made with utmost craftsmanship; both artists are in their pocket.
Blunted back at the lab, Viva Mescal slid me a copy of his new album. Now
his Weird Turn ProLP from 2017 is a master’s
class in keeping an album one coherent mood but this new album Long Live the Peyote is my favorite
record from Mescal since the fevered and political Strange Rumblings in Aztlan. With swifter ease than ever Mescal
bridges hip-hop posturing with grown man example setting, barring out spazzing
with hook-driven songwriting, psychedelic politics with working class
grounding. With beats from Rokem, Global Getdown and more, the album bangs and
unfolds cinematically- Mescal’s ponderings and pontifications about drugs like
lean and peyote weave organically into references to the Latin culture’s agua
frescas and nopales that he grew up with. Before we parted I think we had a
moment of kindred business- seeing someone in front of us who kept as busy as
we did. I see it seldom and sometimes it’s nice just to be reminded that you’re
not the only insane one who is trying to balance so much. He gave me valuable
advice on the album he was helping me with as well as another project I have
coming in the Spring and we promised to follow-up with each other about both as
well as music we had mentioned to each other for listening recommendations- I’m
still curious as to what he’ll think of At the Drive In, Mars Volta and No
Malice albums I sent him links to.
Greaseball from Strange People,
Herbalistics, and lately Cookie World Productions has long been my favorite
Inland Emcee and I don’t say that lightly. I recognize that Vision is the
illest freestyler in the region, I recognize that Cam Archer’s power levels are
unimpeachable, I recognize the versatility of Brandon the Wizard and the battle chops of Epyk
Saga so I’m not claiming my preference is objectivity I’m just being honest
about my tastes. On the way home from Boyle Heights I decided to stop in San Dimas
and catch up with the man once known on the other side of the I.E. as Johnny
Greaseball.
“Everybody my age learned the name of the game and I think that we all want to die”
Between the aforementioned Zzay and
Greasy B, I don’t know whose journey of change surprises me more…as I type this
out I think it’s Greaseball’s because Zzay’s felt gradual and step by step
whereas Greaseball’s life shifts seem even more volatile. I remember hanging
out with him in dusty garages and backhouses in San
Bernardino and Riverside
throughout 2014, 2015 and 2016. Reckless swings through downtown with his drunk
troublesome exes, anxious blunts with ne’er do wells in alleys….visiting him at
what many call the TrapHouse in San Dimas
was different. A beautiful home sheltering a makeshift artist commune, various
beanie-topped sweater-clad tall men made a veritable vegan feast in the kitchen while
Greaseball and I smoked glass pipe bowls of herb in front of his computer and Xbox, showing eachother demos. Young women with their facially modified friends
brought in cannabis cannisters and twelve-packs of Stella Artois. One such person said she used to
hang out with my sister in my old Fontana
home to my stoned surprise. Grease talked about embracing progressive
philosophies that he used to seem somewhat distant from when he was just a
thunder-voiced street urchin battle-ready scrappy Riverside MC. On songs like “The
Pain” from his new album The Alligator KingGrease shows that his values
have changed- he now walks through life with a deep almost burdensome empathy
for everyone’s struggles; every stanza is not a tank filled with internal rhymes
designed to melt your face but rather with melancholy limerick that often
devolves into tourettes like spasms of coping mechanisms for the agony of
letting things stack. Even when he does spaz on this song, it’s to show a man
fraying as he grasps at his values like a sweater being ripped from him and not
an MC battle like display of spittery. He
grapples with the loss of his father at a young age in new ways yet compared to
the hagiographic tracks about his father in his past oeuvre. Now he complicates
the picture of his fallen patriarch as he discusses the struggles his mother
bore for the family growing up. On “GoodybeRiver” he says goodbye for now to his
hometown of Riverside, singing wistfully and
hopefully about his current Pomona-Claremont village frequenting San Dimas-dwelling paradigm. Given the inter-genre collaborations and production company community
he’s developed with Birote the Musical and other Cookie World artists, who can blame
him? Rock artists and the always welcome Hepthy sound equally natural on this indie hip-hop masterpiece of an album.On "I think I do", Grease embraces the idea of free will and gets positively philosophical. Grease was fresh off of a night at the Smell in LA rocking a packed house when
we caught up; also right around his birthday, like Mescal. I told him I was
truly envious of his new life-art-friends arrangement. That I had long sought
such a treehouse refuge in my own 20s and that I was happy he had the chance to
truly enjoy and expand on such an opportunity. He gave me some kind feedback on
a song I had about just those very topics. I asked him if he'd heard Mescal's new one and he said not yet. He told me a story about how he saw that his last album Happiness to Me was on a Snapchat story shared by EOTR some months back and he laughed and thought "gotcha!" as he saw the image scroll by on his feed. "Good," I thought, "Greaseball and EOTR should be hearing eachother as they are each the most cutting edge progressive boom-bap Latinos of their respective regions..."
His new album haunts me- for me it
represents working class Latinos of my generation finally bumping against the
realities of the limitations of our aspirations. Here he is existing in a
situation I used to fantasize about and he drops a 45 minute long document as
to the inescapable pain of life when you’ve been trained to feel inadequate by
a too-often too-narrow-minded society. Here he is to say the pros and cons are
just as balanced in his circumstance and perhaps even more starkly and intense.
His Gator-King persona alternates between being out of fucks to give and being
paralyzed with sympathy for his fellow misfits and lovers. His defensiveness
slowly gives way to his seeing all of our souls behind surprisingly earnest
eyes.
Mescal and Greaseball are both
sensitive thoughtful Capricorn poets who have built communities they’ve nestled
themselves within. I relate more to Greaseball’s claustrophobic paintings
because of where I am from but visions like Mescal’s give us I.E. kids an idea
of what we’re looking for when we stare towards the coast and press down on the
gas. I thought of both of them and the friends I’ve been lucky enough to meet
and know through and around them as I made my way home, transferring from the
605 North to the 210 East, chasing the massive distant moon.
Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is staff writer for JooseBoxx, a youth hip-hop and poetry tutor, and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com
Before you see them open for Felipe Esparza tomorrow night in L.A. check out a sampling of what the EOTR network has been up to if you weren't aware....
How does Muds One keep topping himself? Check this ridiculously entertaining piece featuring Hollow, Zzay and many more from the EOTR Network.
The EOTR Vlog continues apace as the anchor show of their TV channel so to speak- the saga continues!
With the breezy intimacy of a snapchat story, Kiddo has begun the second ongoing webseries on the EOTR network YouTube channel. Muds is pretty incredible at this shit so that Kiddo decided to try her hand at it anyway is a sign of her bravery and example of the kind of work ethic the EOTR squad has. That it's funny and engrossing is a sign of their dynamism and her sense of editing and humor as well- enjoy!
The Soul Providers are cooking something new and in the meantime they're gonna tease you with weekly poetic doses of hip-hop city life rawness- this duo will always surprise you for the better.
Falcon 9 with Mescal, Macks, Zzay, Rokem and Ras Austin is another example of the kind of withcraft these folks brew on the regular- vibe out to this! Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is a staff writer for JooseBoxx, youth hip-hop writing instructor with CHORDS Enrichment Youth program (chordseyp.org) and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com
In the interest of starting new segments, here's a new one for the East Of The River crew that seems to need its own feature on this site because of how much of their content we share.....
All video by Mighty Muds One
Zzay - Cool, Calm & Connected
Muds One documents a smooth night with a selective songstress...
Killa Teck ft. Sir J - This One
Hot ass single from Killa Teck with a poppin' city video from Muds One
Kiddo x Mad Macks x Badson - Do or Die
Hop on the merry-go-round with lyrical killers onetime....
Enjoy! Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is a staff writer for JooseBoxx, youth hip-hop writing instructor with CHORDS Enrichment Youth program (chordseyp.org) and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com
In the years since I first met Zzay and reviewed her last album Cloud 92, she has developed and polished her craft and business savvy immensely. Like MC Mega (now known as Brandon the Wizard) before her, I saw her make spirited earnest attempts to collaborate with multiple crews in the So Cal region including my own before finding a space and set of people who both fully appreciated her contributions and had a platform strong enough to propagate them. She’s been a host for B-Side Show, toured with Belzar, hosted for BricktoYaFace Common Ground events, slummed it with beatmakers and hipsters in San Bernardino, became part of the Platform Collection family, lots in between and most recently linked up with the prolific and borderline-massive East of the River network based in Boyle Heights.
I say all this to say that I thought her style would be refined and professionalized to the point of being unrecognizable on her next album, Botany. I was prepared for this and thought "well the old songs exist, the new songs will exist too, it's all good." To my pleasant surprise she kept it all while growing in new directions. On songs like the first single and video "The Stem's Cry" she keeps it raw on some boom-bap that eases into melody at its end. "No one in the White House is a girl!" she says earnestly but angrily on the hard Doja beat. The song returns to humility as mantra, a common theme of EOTR.
"I'ma spark up a blunt- don't you tell me how to function!"
"You don't talk enough" is vintage Zzay about waning and see-sawingly uneven relationships over melancholy infectious melodies. "All Kinds Of" is her with a persona her listeners would be familiar with but still with a new kind of song, speaking to unappreciative men from the past with jazzy wistfulness. “Wilted” is a mesmerizing "93 til infinity" flip; like most on the album, it's about valuing yourself enough to not keep negative people around. "Cool, calm and connected" and "Barcode" are harmonious stony stream of consciousness poems that deliver for fans of her older work. She's not afraid to get weird on stranger beats like "Spotlight" vacillating from siren cooing to aggressive rapping over trippy beats whose snares and bass fade in and out.
On "Bloom" and "Venus Flytrap" she brings the drama and displays her diva chops; "Venus" is particularly fun to hear revisited. The song that made me fear she would lose her older poetry-stream style but at the same time excited to hear what someone with her drive would do with more professional tools and enablers was "Late Bloomer". A masterful jazz-pop piece produced by Aspect One and written by Viva Mescal, Zzay makes it her own with perfect restraint, tune development and innate commitment to the character and message of the song. That the song feels like a lovely culmination of Zzay's other lovelorn story songs sells it further- her performer's persona is someone the audience connects with on a vulnerable level and hearing her this confident and wise, speaking kindly to a young flower perhaps not unlike herself once is charming and timeless yet neo-soul and hip-hop. Spec's crackin' claps and funky melodic layers give Zzay one of the most deft and tight soundscapes she's yet to float on.
One doesn't have to look farther than the album's launch website zzaybotany.com to see she is a in a fertile creative mental space with the East of the River crew and in her own right, offering multimedia content and handcrafted paintings and shirts that go with the music.
The album's themes unfold naturally with the idea of a person blooming into finding a balance and is rich with plays on the botanical like "Late Bloomer", "Stem's Cry", "Bloom" and the sun cycles alluded to in the intro and outro.
That Zzay could deliver an album with pop gems like "Bloomer" , conscious boom-bap like "Stem's cry" and addictive sorrowful mourns like "You don't talk enough" speaks to her versatility and confidence in different musical pockets. Botany is a more than worthy destination for her fans from all over So Cal and beyond who have kept up with her artistic journeys thus far.
Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is a staff writer for JooseBoxx, youth hip-hop writing instructor with CHORDS Enrichment Youth program (chordseyp.org) and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com
From Left to Right Top: Aldo Manuel, Ras Josh, and Jordan "Calmfixup" Meneses Bottom: Wiggy Woo Tanjint and Sham
The collective? Wait, no, the band? The rap group? It's hard trying to label these guys but what I do know about them is they are a talented and DIVERSE group of musicians that go by the name West Coast Avengers. West Coast Avengers (or WCA) had the release party for their newest album The Inland Empire Strikes Back on Wednesday and it was dope! Live performances from Zzay, Notiz Yong, Nat the Lioness and Nikki Harlin were the accompanying side dishes to a superset main course mixture of cuts from the first WCA project (W.C.A.) and their latest. The night featured emcees spitting flows, poetry, turntablism, and dope beat sets from WCA's Ras Josh, Jordan "Calmfixup" Meneses, and Aldo Manuel. Check out some pics from the event below. More after the break...
Zzay and her producer Nugget have teamed up for a chill and funky modern R&B hip-hop
sampler platter of deliciousness called “Cloud ‘92” presumably a reference to Zzay’s birthyear. Zzay has been making some noise with her constant collaborations with local artists (full disclosure, my band the West Coast Avengers have some collabs with Zzay in the works as well) since moving to the Inland Empire from Los Angeles area in recent months so for certain crowds, her debut EP has been highly anticipated. Zzay’s strong singing is well-served by Nugget’s clean, melodic and professional production. “ 1 Up” introduces her thoughtful, tastefully angsty young sounds to us in a laid back way. Her vocal lines are gorgeous and there’s a certain sense of stream of consciousness to even her sung lines that resemble freestyle rap. “Find A Way Out” continues her relatable tales of paying bills and keeping a hold of oneself in today’s fast paced world of high rent and shaky lovers. The interludes provide a nice touch of artistry and electronica; despite their brief nature, they contribute to the relaxed feel of the album. “Transitions” nicely expounds upon what the speaker wants, “roll another because we get so high”. On this and a few other tracks Zzay raps as well as sings; her raps are earnest, loose, and often humorous. Given that it has her rapping over her own sung vocal lines, “Sun Song” is a nice track to end the record on. The Notorious B.I.G. remix outro is a nice nod to the 90s era the album pays homage too. Don’t sleep on Zzay; also catch her in Pasadena performing with Belzar on January 17th.
Tristan “Tanjint the Wiggy Woo” Acker is a San Bernardino based writer, performer and musician; he holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from California State University at San Bernardino. You can read his poetry at Squalorly, Inlandia, El Portal, Dead Flowers and other print and online magazines. Listen to his work and his work with his band the West Coast Avengers at westcoastavengers.com. Follow him on twitter @Wiggism or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com.
