The Alchemist and Evidence are old friends—they’ve known each other since the early 90s. Each is a rapper and a producer, and both are dedicated students of the rap game with a preternatural awareness of the history and context of their art that endows the music they create together with additional meaning. The pair bring that shared understanding to their new project Lord Steppington, a welcome addition to the collection of solid boom-bap rap albums that Alchemist has helmed over the last few years.
Alchemist has been a prolific producer for more than a decade, but as the gangster-rap complex he was once a cog in has evaporated, he's emerged a key player, uniting a host of veterans and young rap nerds alike to create classicist rap music. Starting with Return of the Mac, a 2007 collaboration with Prodigy of Mobb Deep, Alchemist has released a string of solid projects with rappers like Action Bronson, Boldy James, Curren$y, and Domo Genesis. What unites these rappers is a reverence for the art form of 90s rap, combined with a welcome dedication to not taking themselves too seriously. Jokes and skits that reek of weed abound on these albums, which add to the sense that you’re listening to a collection of above-average rappers who feel supremely comfortable making music with one another.
That sense is heightened given the relationship between Alchemist and Evidence. The two share an outsider’s take on rap music (which may have something to do with being two of the only non-black kids in their neighborhood). Since their early days of working together, when Alchemist used to craft beats for Evidence’s group Dilated Peoples, there’s been a sense within their music of striving for credibility. And the way they’ve achieved that credibility is by building an insular world of musical references that’s both dense and possibly invisible to those who haven’t been listening to rap’s odds and ends for the last 10 odd years. Lord Steppington is an album that clowns on Theophilus London’s lips, and Bubba Sparxxx’s country-rap opus Deliverance. It’s an album that refashions the old New Orleans song “Iko Iko” as a mantra full of gangster menace. It is filled to the brim with insider references, so casually delivered in such a non sequitur fashion, that the uninitiated might not even know what was going on.
Not surprising then to hear that this sort of music will work best for those denizens of the rap universe who are well positioned to understand its in-jokes. But Alchemists’ style doesn't rely on stacks of signifiers—he's got that postmodern ability to mine new meaning from old forms and the musicality of L**ord Steppington should recommend it to those who might be put off by its rap-nerd bona fides. Alchemist’s beats on the album (Evidence only has one producing credit, on “Byron G”) fuse the iron underpinnings of New York boom-bap with either expansive soul or psychedelic edge, or both. The first track here, “More Wins”, may sound like a simple looped sample, but right before the two-minute mark, the full force of the original song comes in and the track shifts on its axis. Elsewhere, “Banging Sound” (more harmless than the name suggests), combines disparate elements: a trippy childlike sing-song for a chorus that contrasts nicely with the descending bassline and minimalist snare on the verses.
The raps often sound equally pieced together but their hip-hop-almanac quality makes them feel familiar, comfortable as worn-out clothing. “Step Masters”, for example, feels like something the Beasties would have made during the Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 sessions, Ricky Bobby references nestling nicely besides Evidence’s improvised aphorisms (“I ain’t the mover, I’m the man that you hand the cream.”). The guest apperances contribute to the album’s happy mixing pot; on “Byron G” (which starts and ends with a sample of Kanye at the 2008 Brit awards), Domo Genesis spits one of the more tightly wound verses of his still-young career, only to hand the mic off to Scott Caan, who rapped with Alchemist in the Whooliganz before Varsity Blues jump-started his acting career. Action Bronson, Styles P, and Fashawn all make appearances, and each sounds relaxed, flowing naturally. Even the easily-agitated Blu sounds at home on the album, keeping Evidence and his fellow Dilated Person, Rakaa, company on the mellow track "Tomorrow".
These sorts of fun surprises can make Lord Steppington feel like a Saturday morning cartoon, the kind where a lack of depth doesn't matter because the colors are so bright, the action is so fast, and the jokes are funny. But the album, like so much of Alchemists' recent work, occasionally unleashes a Rembrandt. There are two songs here that astound. The first, “Swimteam Rastas”, is a memoir-esque take on the rap life from a dialed-in Evidence elevated by heavenly chipmunk soul in its middle third. “See the Rich Man Play” is even stronger, with an on-point Roc Marciano character sketch about a mescaline-addled gambler with the fix in contributing to a three-part meditation on risk.
Songs like these don't diminish the fun collection that they reside in. But they're so head and shoulders above, so exquisitely crafted, that it makes the rockist in me wish we could hear a full album’s worth, something that Alchemist has yet to do with any single collaborator other than Prodigy. (Rap nerds I know have taken to editing together songs from different albums to achieve these results.) Lord Steppington is just the latest remarkably solid offering from Alchemist and co. and the artists involved clearly think of the endeavors as fun and games. Of course, the fun that the artists are having is what makes albums like Lord Steppington work. Still, I’d love to see the Alchemist take a risk and hear the results when things get more serious.
