The music streaming platform Bandcamp has posted a story headlined “Desert Heat: Diving Into the Arizona Hip-Hop Scene.”
It begins with a shout-out to two local hip-hop veterans.
“The Copper State’s never really had a national breakout star,” Dash Lewis writes, “though Shug, an emcee signed to Def Jam in the 1990s, and Willie Northpole, who signed with Disturbing Tha Peace in 2007, both came close.”
The writer says Murkemz, “a charismatic young rapper from Phoenix with a dazzling smile and an animated voice, currently seems poised to garner a mainstream audience, thanks to the virality of his recent track ‘We Outside’ and an impressive appearance on Sway’s Universe.”
The story notes that Injury Reserve and Mega Ran have both amassed “substantial underground followings and positive critical reception, frequently packing mid-size venues around the country.”
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For those tapped into Arizona hip-hop, Lewis argues, there’s “plenty of reason to be proud and passionate.”
The story then goes on to shine a spotlight on nine Arizona records well worth tracking down.
Lando Chill & The Lasso, ‘māyā. maia. Mayu’
Lando Chill & The Lasso’s second collaboration is hailed as “a beguiling slab of hip-hop, psych-funk and R&B,” “an excellent example of the spacious ‘Arizona sound’” and “an effortlessly listenable, rapturous EP that seeps through the speakers like an essential oil diffuser, offering a pleasant, exceptionally vibey 20 minutes.”
Psypiritual & Apetight, ‘Free God’
The writer explains that “Free God” is, in part, the result of the producer coming back from a trip to Japan with an array of obscure Japanese funk, jazz and pop records, which he “chopped, looped and warped” into “a trove of woozy, heat-dizzy beats” in Phoenix, sending the results to Tucson rapper Psypiritual.
“The resulting record,” Lewis writes, “is beautiful — breezy, bright, and as gently psychedelic as an Arizona sunrise” with lyrics that “examine heady topics like self-doubt, often disappearing into billowing clouds of weed smoke to escape the day-to-day challenges of existence.”
REY & DVOID, ‘Chipped Painted Pictures’
This one is hailed as “a great entry point to the highly talented, dizzyingly prolific TWELVOTWO collective,” “a real sonic feast” and “a deeply rewarding album” whose “trippy, three-dimensional beats are thick and drone-y, slowly uncurling like a snake on a warm rock, while REY raps in dense, elastic paragraphs.”
Injury Reserve, ‘Floss’
This entry begins with “No list of Arizona hip-hop albums is complete without at least one Injury Reserve record,” which is true. He chose “Floss,” Lewis writes, because it’s such a perfect introduction for the uninitiated, one that “perfectly showcases a group in the midst of a transformation, moving away from the Neptunes-indebted club bangers they started with to a more jittery punk energy, foreshadowing the all-out destruction they’d achieve with 2021’s ‘By The Time I Get To Phoenix.’”
RiTchie, ‘Triple Digits’
RiTchie with a T of Injury Reserve recorded “Triple Digits” as a solo record after the untimely death of Steppa J. Groggs while the future of the group was still uncertain. Lewis calls it “delightfully weird” while noting that “instead of the airiness present in so much Arizona rap, ‘Triple Digits’ is soupy, every sound slowly melting under the punishing desert sun.”
He also writes of RiTchie rapping with “a desperate, exasperated groan, as if the oasis within view keeps moving back a few feet.”
Halal Boys, ‘Black Blues Brothers’
Halal Boys’ second album, Lewis writes, “might be one of the oddest, funnest entries on this list,” noting that “the duo favors simple, hypnotic production untethered to a genre, but it all works — the bubbly synth-bap of ‘2 Days Before Juneteenth’ sits comfortably next to the churning flute trap of ‘FatLips.’”
Maze Overlay, ‘AZTECAZ’
Lewis calls this one “a shining star” in the north Phoenix rapper’s “vast body of work” spanning nearly two decades. He also says the record “leans into the trudging boom bap commonly associated with the Umbrella Collective and the Lynn, Massachusetts, scene (Maze frequently works with members of both), but with an Arizonan aesthetic.”
It’s also what Lewis describes as “a celebration of Arizona, packed with references to desert ecology, vision quests to the vortexes in Sedona and the cleansing rains of monsoon season.”
Grim Moses, ‘Skeletor’
Lewis writes that “much like frequent collaborator Maze Overlay, Grim Moses traffics in cerebral street rap… spitting hard-nosed raps over dusty, greyscale beats” while “rapping in a cold monotone that feels like holding eye contact for too long.” The album’s “heavy vibe,” he writes, “sounds almost post-apocalyptic, recasting the arid Sonoran Desert as a frozen tundra.”
Cash Lanksy, ‘Man of the House’
This Tucson rapper’s debut was singled out as “a grown, soulful take on the Arizona sound, much more indebted to the region’s reverence for lowrider oldies” with songs that “seem built for when the car show or park hang winds down, when brown liquor splashes into cups and lawn chairs sag with the weight of years.” It’s a “meditation on aging,” Lewis writes, “reaching back into his memories to assess the arc of his life so far” at times while offering “a stark take on existentialism, acknowledging that each choice one makes is a fork in the road.”
Ed has covered pop music for The Republic since 2007, reviewing festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com.
