Albums
Self Restraint
2016
Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap
Release Date: 2016
By Matthew Ramirez
Reviewed October 21, 2016
Self Restraint, the latest album from rapper Gods Wisdom of the New England-based Dark World collective, arrives feeling strangely dated, as if it’s an artifact from 2011 or 2012.
I don’t know if technology has accelerated the process of nostalgia, but we’re only six years removed from the blip the words “witch house” created on the music scene, and even fewer than that from when art-damaged kids creating abrasive rap seemed novel. , the latest album from the Northampton, Mass. rapper Gods Wisdom of the New England-based Dark World collective arrives feeling strangely dated, as if it’s an artifact from 2011 or 2012. The tropes are there, from “666” in Gods Wisdom Bandcamp URL, Tumblr-inspired “wtf” samples (like a snippet of “The Simpsons” here or old news footage there) to the music videos made to look as if they’re shot on VHS; the obsession with the most obvious staples of rap is there, too, from booming low-end to hyperbolic boasts (“in high school I had sex with my teacher” from “2 Lives” is a galling moment, because it’s unclear if this is supposed to be funny or obtuse—it doesn’t work either way), and it’s all done in a manner that suggests this stuff is blazingly au courant. (Noted cool person Kim Gordon, for instance, put Gods Wisdom in her Top Ten of 2015 for ).