Flatbasset Radio's Album Of The Week for the week of December 1st-7th, 2014:
TheStand4rd - TheStand4rd
01. Binoculars
02. Stay
04. Simple Needs
05. Pretty
06. Vital Signs
07. Too Involved
08. Decisions
09. Tryna Fuck / No Reply
10. Weight
11. AsapRockyTypeBeat
12. Victims
First things first, let me apologize for posting this a day after the AOTW timeframe ended. On the one hand, I'm very busy. On the other hand, I needed an extra day to figure out just what the hell is going on with this record.
As you've probably read by now, TheStand4rd is made up of four up-and-coming St. Paulites: Bobby Raps, Allan Kingdom, & Spooky Black on the vocals with Psymun providing the beats. Despite the fact that both Kingdom & Psymun have made appearances on this blog with AOTW posts, I still can't really wrap my mind around what's going on here.
Allan Kingdom has certainly seen his career take off since that City Pages article that declared him somebody who should be bigger. According to the internet, Spooky Black is an "internet sensation," (though I'd never heard of him before this record, which is crazy, because I'm on the internet all the time). And yet I came away from this album feeling like Psymun was the star of the show.
As I mentioned above, I've written about Psymun in the past and even played his collaborations with Chester Watson & K.Raydio on the podcast. Psymun traffics is laid back, spaced out, beats that typically stand up brilliantly whether somebody's rapping over them or not. From what I've gathered of his personality he's definitely a hip-hop fan (and making beats with the plan that somebody will rap on them), but he's certainly taking a different approach than just about anybody else out there. I mean, you have to have some stones to put out hip-hop music that puts almost no emphasis on percussion.
Psymun's spaced-out beats are the perfect compliment for Kingdom, Spooky, & Bob. As I mentioned in my write-up for Allan Kingdom's Future Memoirs, Kingdom's style seems to be the Upper Midwest's answer to the sing-song cadence coming from Atlanta (Young Thug) & Chicago (Chance The Rapper). Unlike that album, however, the "Minnesota Nice" quality has been tuned down and these young egos are certainly up for a bit of indulgence in success.
Really, that's what I took away from TheStand4rd. I've been following Twin Cities hip-hop for quite some time and the lineage that traces from Atmosphere, Kanser, & Heiruspecs take on traditional hip-hop to Doomtree's more skewed, wide open version seems to have led us here. As far as I can tell, TheStand4rd at its core is four talented young men with a completely different idea of what "hip-hop" is supposed to sound like. They put in plenty of work exploring these ideas as solo artists and, with this album, have combined their strengths to force the Twin Cities to sit up & take notice. Like I said earlier, I'd be lying if I said I totally understood what was going on here, but if this album really is the opening salvo from the next generation in Twin Cities hip-hop then I think it's safe to say tat Minnesota's reputation for accessible, boundary-pushing hip-hop will remain intact for years to come.
To hear TheStand4rd for yourself take a minute and swing over to their Soundcloud page.
