Tucson-raised singer/producer Zackey Force Funk walks the line between straight-faced sincerity and pranksterish weirdness, and he's found some cohorts in other fields to help him negotiate that paradox. The most notable of these is Tobacco, who pulled him in to work out some synthesized body-horror psych boogie as Demon Queen. But music under Zackey's own name is still relatively overlooked, with earlier releases like 2011's glitchy, hit-and-run Criminal Wave EP and the abstract sludge rap of Blood Brother, his 2010 teaming with brother Nathan No Face, proving ambitiously eclectic enough to make categorization elusive.
Considering his professed debt to '80s-baby fixtures like Prince and Egyptian Lover—understandably earned, since the now-40 ZFF was an impressionable grade-schooler back then—it wouldn't be out of the question to call Money Green Viper the best intro to his catalog. Even if it's not necessarily his best or his most startling, it's probably the most fun entry point to people looking to figure out his whole deal. And the easy route is to draw parallels to Dâm-Funk with a sliver of Chromeo in his veins—the joy of electro-boogie cut through with a nod of sly loverman irreverence.
But deeper examinations reveal a couple of complications. First off, most of the dominant electro-boogie vibe comes from other producers, with Inkswel's slightly-warped but immediately catchy "Glass Tear Groove" and Tom Noble's Parade-vibe "Cocaine Lady" making for early highlights. Meanwhile Zackey's own time behind the boards produces beats that, while immersive, also feel like outliers: wavy 808 pastel-beach slow jams ("Montego Bay"), choppy weed-cough lounge-Stevie ("Zackey Can't Rap"; "Fuck Your Fire"), and a head-swimming electric piano instrumental ("Suicide") that plays like a Lonnie Liston Smith interlude. And secondly, Zackey's presence as a singer is a tricky thing to get used to, as his falsetto creaks and mutters as much as it glides. It takes some patience to get past that—as well as the fact that some of the stuff he's singing, like the first-draft come-ons of "Yo Bael" ("Wanna get close to you, what you say/ Oh girl, let's take this party to my room, babe") or the pitched-up entry-level pimp talk of "A$$$low," scans a little off either ironically or sincerely.
Problems like that mostly stick out as a brief mid-album speed bump to be endured, however, with the back-loaded latter half of Money Green Viper revealing a few deep-cut surprises. There's the aforementioned "Zackey Can't Rap" (a legit funny bit of shit-talk directed to Zackey's mic skills that's either channeling some unnamed hater or ZFF's own self-effacement) and the soothing, floaty "Suicide". But there's also the Quik-in-space bounce of the Max Kane-produced "Out My Mind" and a run of songs—"Gunny Peace," "Roch," and "Write Her Name"—that reveal a genuine eccentricity that's neither an affectation or an obstacle to get his stay-posi side across. It's not the easiest music to love sometimes, but with all the oddball goodwill at work, it's even harder music to hate.
