Kool A.D. has been on a tear lately, even by his own prolific standards. Official marks his sixth release this year; he’s been keeping a pace of a mixtape a month all summer. He continues to steer towards Lil B comparisons (July’s Zig Zag Zig is 100 tracks long and features a “BASED FREESKRYLE”) and he remains similarly willing to put his experiments and process on display. However, unlike Lil B, who—“California Boy” notwithstanding—tends to stay in his lane stylistically, Kool A.D. continues to roam the sonic map. Recent releases have ranged from focused rap mixtapes that recall his work in Das Racist (Gods of Tomorrow) to entire albums of self-sabotagingly spaced-out bedroom pop (Kool A.D. is Dead). With Official, Kool A.D. has now turned his focus to that other looming influence in the Bay: hyphy.
Official is a collaboration of sorts between Kool A.D. and Trackademicks, a Bay Area producer and rapper known for his work with Mistah F.A.B. and an unofficial remix of E-40’s crossover hit “Tell Me When to Go.” Here, Trackademicks provides seven songs’ worth of textbook hyphy beats: heavy thuds of bass, ’90s synth presets, and plenty of 808 claps. In keeping with this sound, Kool A.D. slips, chameleon-like, into a hyphy persona. While he’s dabbled in the hyphy sound plenty of times before, particularly on his “bus route” trilogy of tapes (“California Music Channel” on 2012’s 51 was produced by and featured a verse from Trackademicks), Official represents a sustained and far deeper engagement with the subgenre. Here, Kool A.D. fully embodies the native sounds of his terroir, gliding over these tracks with a smooth E-40-esque flow. Even his use of regional slang and delivery of ad-libs (either whispered or half-sung in a higher register) is on the nose throughout the course of Official.
Unlike his previous work, Kool’s focus here is on staying in character, a task that he seems to delight in. In place of the usual interplay between stoned clowning and profundity we get lines about partying, money, women, and stunting regarding his access to all of the above. Take the chorus of the trunk-rattling “Rollin’ Thru the Town:” “We be rollin’ through the town/Blowin’ hella clouds/Woofers hella loud/With the windows rolled down like/Ay, ay, ay, ay/Ay, ay, ay, ay.” “This Mane” feels a little closer to Kool’s wheelhouse, with the rapper repeating the phrase, “Y’all ‘aint even fucking with this, mane” until it becomes a sort of hater-baiting mantra. “Clapper” is the closest we get to any internal conflict, with Kool slipping into his usual flow during the first verse, though he's back to full hyphy mode in time for the chorus (“This a clapper mane, bruh, this a heater/Slap it in the old school, slap it in the beater”).
This is pretty low-stakes stuff, but it makes for a fun, breezy listen, especially compared to Kool A.D.’s longer, more freewheeling releases, which can feel impenetrable to all but diehard fans. That said, unlike most of those projects, there aren’t any quotables or moments of clarity to be found here, just seven tracks of lighthearted character-study. Kool A.D. has typically repurposed and flipped other rappers’ lines as well as his own and Official feels like a radical extension of that impulse, an album-length exercise in mimicry. Then again, hyphy’s loose energy has always served a primary influence for Kool and Official can be just as easily read as a love letter to the sounds of his hometown. Official probably won’t soundtrack an east Oakland sideshow any time soon, though were it to pop up at one, it wouldn’t raise many eyebrows.
