DJ Sacred pays tribute to the roots of his odd obsessions with Memphis Rap Strikes Back. The Ukrainian producer is one of those gaunt and shadowy figures who comfortably navigates the hauntological realms of hip-hop's forbidden places looking for deeper, colder sonic paydirt in which to drop his shovel. His work can genuinely sound paranormal and unnatural as it emerges from your speakers to spook your psyche. As you'd expect from the title, Memphis Rap Strikes Back possesses a certain eerieness to its construction. But not eerie enough to scare off casual rap fans. In fact, it may be one of his more inviting releases overall. As a genre, Memphis Rap is known as much for its unique cadence as for its fatalistic outlook. This embrace of life's tendance to engender nihilism in those who have a struggle the hardest to cling to it is what has caused the genre to be the aesthetic mother of first horrorcore, and then trap, and then every bloody-toothed bar that trap subsequently inspired. DJ Sacred doesn't reproduce the desperate impressions of the genre, though. Instead, he casts these dopesick and gritty gangster bars in a new mold- one of upbeat, deep house-inspired, light synth-phonk. It sounds kind of crazy and like it shouldn't work, but this approach gives rhymes about death and die-hard living a sort of hopeful caliber. These hooks are no longer just about survival but about life and the dignified perseverance that living requires. Maybe this is because the beats DJ Sacred has selected and sequenced are so persistent themselves, or because the synths he layers in are so clean and airy, or perhaps it's the selection of vocal samples, the majority of which are probably on the more proactive and aspirational side of the Memphis ethos. Or maybe it's all of these elements taken in the aggregate. Whatever it is, Memphis Rap Strikes Back is not just a great homage to one of the most influential traditions in hip-hop, but a transformative and highly engaging new take on it as well.
