#isolation quarters

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Cities Aviv - Isolation Quarters (Juk)

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Isolation Quarters (Juk) - Cities Aviv

I’ve grown less and less fond of rap as I’ve grown older. As a child of Elvis, The Beatles, Wes Montgomery and Gordon Lightfoot, my transition into hip hop was a natural act of rebellion to the musical canon I’d grown bored of. Any longtime reader of this blog will notice that the pages were once filled with a significantly higher number of hip hop posts as compared to rock and roll, but that ratio has slowly changed. As I started learning more about myself, life and it’s misery, etc. I began to return to the idea that music should provide catharsis, something rap simply does not do.

This isn’t to say I find rap a lesser genre of music. Okay well, actually that is exactly what I’m saying, but only in that rap functionally is handicapped. Hip hop is egotistical music, not just in terms of it’s braggadocio but psychoanalytically speaking as well. Rap focuses on wordplay and cleverness, often relying on highly complex webs of reference that can be intellectually fascinating in the hands of artists like Das Racist. But rap lacks the id that rock and roll centers on. Instead of feeling we get thought, and often the thoughts aren’t very deep. Beyond this, few rappers today are actually taking chances, and the ones that do take chances are quite often defeated by their own lameness (Drake, Lil’ Wayne).

This brings us to Cities Aviv. Since this blog began I’ve been preaching his gospel. His track “Araw” would be the finest rap song of this century if Das Racist had never existed. In other words it’s a masterpiece, and his repertoire has expanded in both the direction of ragged experimentalism, as well as that of classical formalism. Aviv finds a genius aural blend of rough hewn and dissonant textures, atypical song structure and intentionally distressing beats, while also understanding better than almost any rapper alive what makes hip hop work in terms of it’s fundamental enjoyment.

“Isolation Quarters (Juk)” is his latest work of wonder. Opening with an Oneohtrix Point Never-esque soundscape of clashing noise, it slowly unfolds into about the tastiest groove possible, finding a perfect balance between the aforementioned avant garde noise and classic hip hop.

Iconoclast that he is, Cities Aviv has taken to obscuring his vocals with effects and reverb, making them often unintelligible without the right amount of intense focus/the right cocktail of psychoactive substances flowing through your veins. If anyone today is trying to bring rap into the realm of the id, the place where music holds actual emotional meaning beyond grandstanding and posturing (the only two things that “meaningful” songs like Tupac’s “Mama” or Eminem’s “When I’m Gone” achieve instead of the emotional gut punch they strive for) it’s Cities Aviv. All hail the greatest rapper that nobody has heard of.

GENRE: Hip Hop, Rap, Experimental, Noise, Electronic Avant Garde