There are moments in your music listening journey that you don’t forget. Certain passages of music constantly floor you, certain song arrangements, and of course, certain voices. Everyone has a preference for voices. When it comes to hip hop, I love gravely voices. Artists who’s voices sound like they’ve been chewing glass. A great example of this, at times, can be Boldy James. But the artist that fostered this fascination and love of grimey gutter voices, for me, is Meechy Darko. Ever since I heard Meechy on Joey Bada$$’s “Ring The Alarm”, I had to hear his art. I dived head first into Flatbush Zombies, Meechy’s group with rappers Zombie Jewice and Erik the Architect, two incredible rappers in their own right, and love their output to this day. But one thing I always wanted was a solo Meechy album, for him to get his shit off and really double down on the voice and layers. I’m selfish, I wanted that Meechy solo rap album. We got just that, and more.
From the first moments of “CURSED”, you are shown why he named the album what he did. It’s Gothic in tone, it’s luxurious in quality, but it doesn’t stay that way for long thanks to a head-bobbing beat, courtesy of DJ Pain1 & DiRTBOY. “Never Forgettin’” brings that Meechy that I’m looking for; gravel voice Meechy who doesn’t care about hurting anyone’s feelings. He floats on this beat through and through, even giving a flow change on the second verse. That track is followed up by the first single “Kill Us All (K.U.A.)”. With Meechy being a moderately versatile rapper, content wise, I was curious to know how his solo debut would sound, topics wise. While he has mentioned conspiracy theories in the past, he really doubled down on this track and it was definitely a solid single.
Treat your face like a gun rage, blood bath, open floodgate
This’ll send the shit off the runway
Gunplay, cause some words you can’t unsay
Melanin heavy, I just be suckin up the sunray
I don’t plan on doing a track by track breakdown of this album, but there are three more tracks I do want to highlight, the first of the three being “On GOD” featuring A-Track & Freddie Gibbs. Ever since Meechy’s verse on Freddie’s Pinata, I was really curious to see what the flipside of that would sound like, Freddie on a Meechy (or Flatbush track). Freddie, as always, sounded perfect on this track. While he definitely ascended in popularity after his work with Madlib on Pinata and Bandana (And Montana whenever that drops!), Freddie has always had an incredible flow and approach to attacking a track. This track is no different. I refrained from hearing this single when it was announced cause I wanted to hear it in the context of the album, but I will say that this track is definitely a standout. What unfortunately also a standout was one of the two tracks I didn’t like on this album, The MoMA, featuring Black Thought. On paper, this should have been an absolute banger, but it’s by far my least favorite track on this album. Black Thought is in my top 5 list of favorite AND best rappers of all time. He’s an absolute word smith. My issue isn’t with either rapper, it’s the track. This track was entirely too long in my opinion. The chorus was far too long in my opinion, and it took almost 3 minutes to get to Tariq’s verse.
The last track I want to point out, is my far my favorite off this whole project. It might accidentally have become my most played track of the year, and that honor goes to “Hennessy & Halos”. That beat is absolutely incredible. I could have done a whole post on how that beat made me feel. It sounds like a Charles Manson killing spree. It sounds so damn good that I wish we had a whole album of sinister sounding beats like that. There’s nothing luxurious about this beat, it’s a pulsing track that only gets more insane when the beat comes in on the 2nd half of the chorus.
Meechy didn’t really surprise me on this album, but maybe that’s cause I knew he couldn’t fail. I feel he looked at his catalog, his musical output, and took the best traits from all his monikers (Fleezus Christ, Acid God, Still Not The Father, Durt Cobain, 2Cup Shakur, Deddie Guerrero) and just crafted an album that is uniquely Meechy. No one else could do this sound like he could. The production was incredible and it, to me, was worth the wait.
Memories In Wax 
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