Chicago rapper Davis has the right vibe. It's the kind of vibe that portends the future while existing in the moment. He keeps his face covered and blacked out in photos. He could be anyone, even if few could claim his talent. His choice of samples sincerely plums the depths of rap and soul history while their sequencing allows him to thrive at a level of irony that would make most 4 Chan users uneasy. He has a measured flow and a calm resolve with a decisive delivery and cadence that spurs you for reading into any one line too deeply, while rebuking you for not heeding their underlying meaning directly as he speaks. He reminds me a little of another Chicago rapper, Serengeti. Another local wordsmith who likes to play fast and loose with context and sincerity but whose rhymes never fail to land dead-ass on-point. As you might expect, Davis's second album of 2023 is Plum Whisky really cooks. Hilariously, if you actually want to brew up some tipsy tub of prune juice, there is a pressure cooker recipe spliced into skits and garnished around the album. You can pick out the details while you're swooning to the soul samples and choking on the cutthroat jabs and marinate in a rain of molten blacktop and the often desperate, abstract imagery that his screeds invoke. The samples coo and Davis spits. The background singer's teeth gleam, while his gums bleed from chewing on bitter barbs. A conscious disaster, pregnant with nightmares. A history of bloody headlines imprinted on the interior of a hamster wheel that is always turning in his mind and which we encounter as a phantasmagoria through the light flickering in his eyes. 13 flavors of pungent gut-bombing bangers, each as intoxicating as the last.
