Esham - Dead Flowerz

Dead Flowerz is probably my second favourite release behind Closed Casket (a close tie with KKKill The Fetus), which deals less with fantasy realms and rapping about the devil and focuses on the life of an inner city black man in the 90s, played up entirely with the excesses and absurdity of E’s “wicket shit” acid rap style. Drugs, guns and XXX girls is the order of the day, and whilst that might sound somewhat tedious, Esham’s flow, whilst not the most inventive, is positively infectious, matching the cheap 90s analogue vibes perfectly. If Poot Carr from The Wire recorded a rap record, I would expect it to sound like Dead Flowerz. 

Boasting a stunning production, which is a bit cleaner than previous records but still has that stank-ass bass and the distorted kicks. Stand out dimes include the opener "What", which follows perfectly into the legendary "You Better Ask Somebody". "Kill Or Be Killed", "Foodstamp", "Fried Chicken" and "Trick Wit Me" are all further examples of Esham's porno-drenched murdah style (maybe not as OTT as Necro's The Sexorsist but it is easy to make comparisons here). "Charlie Manson" is probably my favourite track, with the bass synth being one of the most stinking things I've ever come across in my entire life. 

It wasn't until a recent re-listen that I caught the bit about him smoking "dead flowers" that I realized what the title could mean. Very clever, Mr. Esham. 

PS - Try the LIW / Esham Dead Flowerz drinking game: every time he mentions or rhymes the phrase "drug related" you better take a swig, boy.

Esham - Closed Casket

Closed Casket is surely the definitive Esham record – I love absolutely everything about it; the sound, the lyrics, the samples, even the artwork (for some reason). Closed Casket captures a slice of Detroit “suicidalist” lifestyle in the smog of the early 90s, during that perfect period when Esham was still dank as fuck but not dropping references to the man down below every 20 seconds. 

I tend to categorise Esham into two categories – a.) when he goes hard, and b.) when he goes silly. Closed Casket falls entirely into the first camp, and is nowhere near as wet as records such as Mail Dominance or that Gothom City nonsense. All the beats are bangers, the bass is spot on, rumbling nicely along for a fat backbone. The production is lightyears ahead of the previous record, KKKill The Fetus, but still retains that grime and almost, how can I put it, copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copied-cassette sound. 

This kinda gets lumped in with the horrorcore thing as Esham is associated with ICP and all that lot, but any fan of old school hip hop would do themselves a service by checking this out. 

Stand-out tracks: “The Wicketshit Will Never Die”, “My Homie Got Shot”, “Can’t Take It Wit Cha”, “Chatty Ass Nigga”, “Flatline”, “2 Dollahoe”, “I’ll Be Glad When You Dead”. 

Esham - KKKill The Fetus

I’ve really been digging Esham recently. Well, I’ve always loved this guy (one of the few positive things to come out of my teenage obsession with ICP) but I discovered that a whole bunch of his albums are streaming on Spotify, which is absolutely great news because a ton of his early works contained a pile of uncleared sampling and are therefore seemingly forever confined to the “out of print” section of music industry hell. Asides from downloading some awful torrent files or picking up an overpriced CD when it sprang up on eBay or Discogs, Youtube was the only way to really hear these old Esham gems. Until now.

I’m sure this sample-thievery will catch up with The Boogeyman sooner or later though (edit: Closed Casket, my favourite Esham record, has already disappeared off Spotify). KKKill The Fetus is a close second though, in degrees of “Tha Wicket Shit”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, KKKill The Fetus is a dark and somewhat vulgar hip hop record that gives off puzzling overtones of violence and misogyny. This is acid rap after all, but I fear sometimes Esham’s message is clouded in an attempt to be shocking and offensive; in his early work, at least. The title-track is a perfect example, what should indicate a full support of a woman’s choice to terminate or not becomes a hamfisted hatefuck of an attack against the black lower class, and seems almost to glorify or even revel in the actual process of killing a fetus. Granted, Esham can say what the fuck he likes – it’s his album – but I’m getting mixed messages here.

If you’ve not heard Esham before this older material can be pretty abrasive compared to most hip hop (and no, hipsters; not in the way that Death Grips does it). The entire ICP sound can be attributed to “Game Of Death”featuring Mastamind. To be honest, the similarities here are uncanny. “Game Of Death” could easily have been on one of the first ICP records. It’s easy to see how Esham has turned bitter towards the duo in recent years, as they basically built their success off of his and his peer’s backs.

Nevertheless, this is a pillar in the history of underground hip hop. Without this record there’d may well be no Eminem, and most definitely no Insane Clown Posse.

KKKlick the Button!

Insane Clown Posse - The Carnival of Carnage

This is where it all began! Well, not all of it, but as far the Dark Carnival thing goes and the Joker's Card legacy shit, it all began here. ICP's debut record is like nothing else in their history and it remains to this day one of my favourite records by them. It possesses an extremely amateur mix by an at-the-time fresh-faced Mike Clark, and shows the group before they had fully adjusted to their new Insane Clown personas. The whole thing might be dressed up with a carnival vibe, but for me this record is much more Inner City than it is Insane Clown. Later records explored a much more alternative backdrop of sounds, but Carnival of Carnage fits in unusually with the more typical approach of hip hop in the early 90s, with heavy overtones of gangster rap and old-school, awkward-to-listen-to sound collages.

There are a lot of themes here that were quickly dropped as ICP gradually became more mainstream. For example, there are more misogynistic overtones present here than on any other material the band has made. The text inside the booklet also calls (rather brutally) for the all-out murder of the children of rich people, and incites some sort of crazy revolt where the ghettos will rise up and take over. Despite what "The Carnival" turned out to be, a lot of Juggalos don't seem to remember it's rather childish and worryingly genocidal roots. But, let's not forget that Violent J and Shaggy were basically kids when this record was made.

CoC gets off to a slow start. There are two (yes!) intro tracks before the first songs comes in proper on track three. "First Day Out" is one of my favourite rap songs ever, and tells the tale of going out on a date after being in prison for a while. "Red Neck Hoe" is an ICP classic, and has possibly the most inspired chorus ever; "Bitch, you's a hoe, and hoe you's a bitch; everybody know you's a funky funky bitch". It even features a rather awful contribution from either Esham or Jumpsteady (I honestly can't tell the difference here). "Is That You?" is one of the stand-out tracks on the album, despite featuring Kid Rock ("I drink Faygo it's only a buck-ten, I'ma pour it on ya tits when we fuck-en'").

If you like old-school hip hop but consider ICP to be an absolute joke (which to be fair, they have always strived to be) then this record could be your only chance at liking them. It's a bit shaky compared to other genre greats from that era but it also contains some amazing amateur rhymes ("I'm chillin', I'm illin', with my guts all over the ceilin'") that more than make up for it's crappy production. Self-released on Psychopathic Records.

"Ma'afuckers think I'm sick? You ever seen a bitch take a shit?"

For some absolute fucktarded, cuntworthy, bullshit as piss reason, I cannot post any video links in this blog post. Every time I embed a video into this post and then click preview, it disappears.  Like, totally, even from the html code as if I never put it there. Instead of previewing I tried to publish right off the bat instead, but the same shit happens; that vid just evapourates like my Friday night catch on a Saturday morning; all up outta this bitch without you seein' shit! Fuck! I'm not sure if the fault is with Blogspot or Youtube, because having embedded a video link nearly 200 times before the same way, it sure as hell ain't my fault. I blame Google (a.k.a. Skynet), who owns both of the previously mentioned websites. Maybe Google hates ICP? Sort your shit out, boss!