Each cover of Mach-Hommy and Tha God Fahim’s Dollar Menu series features the head of a famous basketball player and a pile of money. The unapologetically Photoshopped images evoke Who Framed Roger Rabbit in their mix of cartoon physics and real bodies, a blend reflected in the pair’s whimsical yet grimy wealth raps. The irony of the titles reveals itself quickly. More Michelin star dinner than Travis Scott meal, this music toasts to inaccessibility and distinction, Fahim and Mach celebrating exotic foods and winning investments. Variously lively and listless, Dollar Menu 4 highlights the flaws in the formula and in Mach and Fahim’s long-running partnership even as it celebrates their bond.
Though it’s credited to Mach, Dollar Menu 4 is functionally a continuation of the first three Dollar Menu tapes released in 2017, as well as other collaborations like 2018’s Duck CZN: Chinese Algebra and many features on each other’s songs. Fahim and Mach both work in the lineage of gritty mafioso rap refined by Raekwon and AZ in the 1990s, deconstructed and mutated by Roc Marciano and the Alchemist in the 2000s, and polished by Griselda Records (with which they both were once closely affiliated) in the 2010s. Nothing particularly special happens when Fahim and Mach rap together, but they approach the woozy soul loops and textures of their niche from oblique angles.Their constant proximity and frequent collaboration have produced a casual compatibility that’s on display as their verses on songs like “Shukran Don” and “Macabre (A5)” wind around each other like DNA strands. “X10ded” is deliciously easygoing and skillful, their symmetrical flows tracing a fuzzy funk loop peppered with faint drums. “We having fun,” Mach declares in the opening seconds.
That jovial mood only manifests in the music in flashes though. The more they rap together, the more Fahim and Mach’s music reveals its workmanlike qualities. Unlike Clipse, Ghost and Rae, Prodigy and Havoc, Vince and Earl, or Armand Hammer, there’s rarely tension or contrast in their exchanges, their songs never building into noteworthy images or turns of phrase, or generating a shared mission or mythology.Under the microscope, many of Fahim’s verses are bland filler about rapping (“Most of these rappers suck like sipping through a straw”) or making money independently (“Gotta a few main incomes with hustles on the side”). His flow can be unpredictable, drifting out of meter or abruptly ending and then suddenly locking into place, but he always trails Mach, who lands standout lines with both ease and force. His opening lines on “Macabre (A5)” don’t just wander away from the percussion; they rage against it, his imagery delightfully hallucinogenic and colorful: “Blowing cephalopods out the ride with the macabre/No Decepticons so its best to silence the crowd with the barrage/So I leprechaun my neck and cloud up the iris of his eye.”Sadhugold and Fortes’ smoky production, which resembles the kinds of beats Tha God Fahim likes to dump on Bandcamp, helps right this unbalance. The drumless loop on “Food Grade” sways like leaves in wind, matching Mach, Fahim, and Your Old Droog’s wistful verses. And the triumphant horns and crisp percussion on “Maras DonDurmas (Rosewater)” buoy the gilded boasts. But overall these songs underscore how deeply intertwined style, form, and purpose are. Without a driving theme, Fahim and Mach sound aimless and mechanical even when they’re dishing out intricate rhymes left and right.
