REVIEW | OBLIQUE STRATEGIES ‘RAW PASTICHE’

Not­ting­ham’s own Grand Imper­i­al Cappo and We Stay True label boss/producer Mr Brown team up as Oblique Strategies to give you “Raw Pas­tiche” - 11 tracks of Boom Bap backed des­ol­a­tion with heavy, Notts infused, swag­basco smothered bars.

Guest Fea­tures:

Con­fucius MC

Juga-Naut

Van­dal Savage

Recom­men­ded Tracks:

Cognoscenti

Black Out Num­bers Up

Tooth & Nail

Cappo is unques­tion­ably your favour­ite rap­per­’s, favour­ite rap­per and even though the Notts City vet­er­an has been in the game for over 20 years he still shows no sign of slow­ing down or lev­el­ling out and truth be told i don’t think he’s even reached his peak. He sounds abso­lutely raven­ous this time around, he always deliv­ers his chaot­ic bars meth­od­ic­ally and with abso­lute pin­point accur­acy but the refresh­ing factor here is that he really seems to bring it with a fero­city and hun­ger that’s been almost unheard since his debut “Spaz the World”. He is a phe­nom­en­al word­smith and his tech­nic­al abil­ity is second to none. The replay value here is price­less, like he spits on “Bar Car­dio” his words will sink in for Months, Days and Minutes after he lets them loose, leav­ing you mulling them over and over try­ing to con­nect all the dots. I love the obscure ref­er­ences he always seems to slip into the tracks as well as the more loc­al­ised imagery.

When it comes to the fea­tures, Con­fucius sounds at the top of his game and adds such a nice con­trast with his cadence and laid back flow while the crim­in­ally under­rated Van­dal Sav­age and the bar behemoth Juga-Naut bring their dis­tinct­ive Notts nar­rat­ive’s to once more ignite the VVV fire and leave you crav­ing a fol­low-up to 2017’s Bozo Boyz.

Mr Brown brings some abso­lutely sub­lime and var­ied beats to the table here which are per­fect for Cappo to do what he does best. Dusty, hazy decon­struc­ted loops with crack­ling vinyl pops blen­ded togeth­er with drums hard enough to give you a seizure, he’s truly under­rated with­in the scene for his sampling style and the intric­acy of his pro­duc­tion as well as his design work and ded­ic­a­tion to run­ning the We Stay True brand.

This is ser­i­ously an Album of the Year con­tender from the emcee/producer com­bin­a­tion, this one is for the Hip Hop pur­ists, listen­ers who appre­ci­ate upper ech­el­on lyr­ic­ally abil­ity, moun­tains of meta­phors and unpar­alleled style being delivered effort­lessly over exquis­ite, thump­ing beats.

You do NOT want to miss out on this.

Order the lim­ited edi­tion vinyl from We Stay True

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One9ate7

33 year old Not­ting­ham based UK Hip Hop con­nois­seur and vinyl collector.

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• REVIEW | OBLIQUE STRATEGIES ‘RAW PAS­TICHE’ — Novem­ber 26, 2020