Though they seem impossible to forget, here are a few facts: there’s a racist wrinkled orange running the United States; every day, the threat of nuclear war looms heavily above our heads; in 2017, cops can kill unarmed black people and get away with it, even if it’s documented on video. Things are pretty fucked up. Perhaps predicting the not-so-distant future, rapper Denmark Vessey and producer Azarias use their collaborative album, Buy Muy Drugs (“muy” is pronounced “my” here), to imagine a dystopian world in which agony prevails and desperation is the new normal.
The idea isn’t so strange if you’ve followed Vessey’s career. A Detroit native, the rapper/producer borrows his stage name from a former slave turned carpenter who, in 1822, planned what would have been the largest slave revolt in American history. While Vessey the artist isn’t so militant, he dissects current events in his own eccentric way, using off-color rhymes and peculiar imagery to criticize racial discrimination and spiritual constructs. On 2013’s Cult Classic, Vessey played the fictional role of Dr. Yessev, a failed rapper who establishes a cult in an attempt to become famous and wealthy.
On Buy Muy Drugs, Vessey navigates the Silk Road, telling the imagined tale of a black market narcotics dealer pushing his product to the working class. Throughout the album, it’s clear Vessey is talking about something far beyond marijuana or cocaine. This is high-grade, early ’80s crack epidemic level. “Take this shit, feel one-thousand times lighter,” Vessey groans on “MFKZT” (the song title is also the name of the make-believe drug being distributed on the LP). As it plays, though, the stimulant Vessey is referring to becomes increasingly unclear. Are we talking powdery substances, or something distributed by needles? Vessey and Azarias keep the narrative open ended, letting you choose your own adventure.
Perhaps hyper-consumerism is the drug in question. Lyrically, Vessey speaks to our collective insecurity, riffing on hopeless moments in which we buy unnecessary items to ignore the grief by which we’re surrounded. It’s a coping mechanism and a way to feel better when our personal lives go awry. At certain points throughout the album—namely on the Yasiin Bey-aided “Buy My App” and “American Robot,” featuring rapper Open Mike Eagle—Vessey mocks the so-called American Dream, using a wink and wry smile to assess the mind-numbing malaise of daily existence. “Wake up every morning and I brush my teeth!” the rapper exclaims. “Kiss the wife! Go to work!” The following song, “Pressure,” continues that theme. “Yeah I bet this yo’ dream job…,” Vessey raps sarcastically. “Fuck yo’ dreams, bitch, where the fuck is yo’ gold at/Chauffeur in my bulldozer, steam rollin’ your goals flat.”
Sonically, Buy Muy Drugs is noisy and tough to endure, far different from the more traditional rap aesthetic of Cult Classic and 2015’s Martin Lucid Dream (which Earl Sweatshirt liked a lot ). Drugs takes cues from contemporaries like Saul Williams and Busdriver, as something rooted in alternative rap but also influenced by acid-rock and punk. The music is grim, trippy, and dissonant, mixing Afro-Brazilian rhythms, grime, and bass, which adds urgency to Vessey’s unorthodox flow.
In his own unique way, the rapper is pushing us to look beyond the veil and to not take things at face value. Buy Muy Drugs examines our dependence on material possessions, and how being overly dedicated to superficial shit can erode social discourse. The album reminds us to stay the course and ignore the nonsense, to find some kind of peace in a world that’s become increasingly unstable. It seems to say: Human decency is under attack; do what you can to protect your soul.
