Chris Crack has been angling for prominence in the many-tentacled Chicago underground hip-hop scene for a few years now, and these days, the rapper and producer is playing local support for acts like Slick Rick, Mystikal, and Can Ox. Crack built his reputation as a solo artist off of a couple of infectious and irreverent mixtapes—2013's Kitchen in the Bassment, last year's Kickin' It Wit TW, and a couple of collaborative projects with noted "soultrap" architect Tree—which set up the basic parameters of his style: wall-to-wall soul samples (and maybe not much else), a cutting, nasal delivery, and bars that sound as spontaneous as they are aggressive. Like like-minded fellow Chicago MC and frequent collaborator Vic Spencer, Crack pumps out constant musical product—an overwhelming amount of loose, often-hookless rap songs. It's hard to keep up with and organize; songs are tweeted only once, and downloads come with no artist tags and different titles.
From his freestyling strings of verse, to the unimpeded, personable directness of his delivery, to the au naturale quality of his production, Crack's music is intended as comfort food. He's not aiming for perfection from song to song, but to access and inhabit a specific atmosphere and posture consistently: His own. On every level, this is music that is about just living, moving forward and getting by, told from the perspective of a proverbial Lothario and party-hunting nomad, loose in the city at night.
Public Domain 4—which is, despite his constant SoundCloud one-offs, Crack's first full-length project of this year—feels like an apt and well-rounded representation of his personality. The title is a tribute to the legendary series of mixtapes by Harlem icon Max B (Crack even channels Bigavell directly in his detuned hook for the Tree and Spencer-featuring "Again"). The tape is a strikingly smooth listen—an extended, lightly psychedelic tour through backseat smoke sessions, liquor store lines, and other peoples' girlfriends' bedrooms. Crack juggles snaking, off-the-dome flows with more regulated, motormouth patterns: Southern-styled flows you can set your watch to. The vinyl-treated backdrop (coming mostly courtesy of Crack's extra-talented affiliate and soul buff Tmthy Trtl) either lies back to give the rapper space, or feeds his fire.
For the most part, Crack manages to be engaging without locking into clear narratives or hitting on much in the way of revelatory wisdom. The best moments come when he edits his goofiness a bit to arrive at sharper, more quotable lines: "I kick it colder than a snowblower/ Chi-town, mid-December with my Colt open/ With no shoes, Devin the Dude on Pandora/ Rays feeling my aura, I be worse than a Taurus." (Indeed, Crack himself could reasonably turn up on that station, as a modern-day RIYL.)
Crack's music works best if you kick back with it, tune in and out, half-following trains of thought and embracing the diversions. He appreciates fine liquor, Willie Hutch, and good conversation, and he's not too big to rhyme "Jacuzzi" with "booty." Imagine you're shooting the shit with an old friend—your most low-maintenance one. These raps have nothing profound or "new" to offer in their particulars, but the music in sum seems to embody how one might always prefer life to always be. In actuality, unfortunately (to paraphrase a noted self-help writer), it's 90% maintenance, 5% grief, and only 5% that Chris Crack sort of vibe. So ride the wave while you can.
