![]() ![]() See “The Stellar Ray Theory,” where an extended sun metaphor inevitably recalls the song that was meant to open Ghostface’s Bulletproof Wallets but was cut due to clearance issues. While his singing is a reliable vehicle for sorrow and longing, Mach excels while rapping in this lighter palette, when that tongue-in-cheek venom seeps out in unexpected ways. But he qualifies this tone, as he so often does, with the album’s closer, “Ten Boxes - Sin Eater,” where he cheekily conjures the image of a messiah resurrected “in Vetements linen.” This begins with the melancholy “Au Revoir,” where the material things Mach sometimes raps about so gleefully-the yachts, the “thousand-dollar brunches”-sound almost terrifyingly hollow. The interlude underscores a central theme-Mach revels in specificity, and seems to enjoy that it makes his work elusive, even illegible to some-but it also serves a structural purpose on the album, cordoning off the final three songs as their own suite. Pray for Haiti is 16 tracks, and its 13th is simply the audio from an academic discussion of Haitian Creole, where it is noted that speakers in one region of that country might use terminology that is totally foreign to speakers in another. That song, like many others, is augmented by his practiced, scratchy singing voice, a mode that Mach slips into not only to vary the textures but to provide a tonal break from the step-ahead slyness of his raps. On “Kriminel,” when he raps about being unable to eat and seeing visions in his sleep, the verse has a desperation deeper than what would be apparent on the page. This caginess makes it even more arresting when Mach is totally earnest. Mach is worldly the way you imagine a spy would be, or at least upper management in a global oil conglomerate: He knows how to order coffee in Damascus and a hit in Paris, knows which local toughs to muscle out and which to charm into his service. And then there’s the level of detail he brings to his records. But they are stitched together in strange ways and at unexpected times and delivered with a flat affect that draws attention to the fact that the punchline is being placed here, as if he’s creating his own source material to quote and interpolate. Some of these are ordinary (“Got lawyers on retainer just like an orthodontist”) and others exceptional (“Lotta these rappers big 12 like March Madness”). (On “Makrel Jaxon,” he speaks directly to that omnivorous streak: “Next tape might hear me sliding on flamenco/Or calypso/Maybe you should tip-toe.”) The beats he and Gunn have assembled here-mostly from Griselda mainstays like Cee Gee, Camoflauge Monk, and Denny Laflare, plus, notably, three in succession from Kansas City’s Conductor Williams-are varied enough to draw out of Mach each of his many styles: see “Magnum Band” and its low growl, the deceptively rich vocal arrangement on “Kriminel”’s chorus, the way “Makrel Jaxon” sounds like a copy of Donuts that was left out in the rain.īroken into discrete parts, Mach’s rapped verses would seem more conventional than they end up being: They are full of de rigueur punchlines, clever similes that were once the default setting for East Coast rappers. ![]() Mach has long been a chameleon, rapping or singing over some of the drumless loops that are a staple of the post- Marcberg underground, but also beats that are far more punishing, or far more maximal the unifier has been a jagged mix. Gunn serves as executive producer and raps three times, though his added value is clearest when he shows up to ad-lib under Mach’s verses or talk neo-Puff shit between them. Pray for Haiti is a reunion with Westside Gunn, the Buffalo rapper whose Griselda collective included Mach before the two had a falling out. Pray for Haiti is his most ambitious, definitive project since his 2016 masterpiece Haitian Body Odor, a collage rendered in full. Mach reveals himself slowly, through allusion and immersion, an image loading grainily. ![]() 3 or Mm.Food?, or on the Creole being translated exactly. His work is not designed to be decoded its success does not hinge on the listener knowing which words or cadences are borrowed from Vol. His slang and diction shift depending on the narrator, depending on the mood, the beat, the threat or the plea being conveyed. He will interpolate Get Rich or Die Tryin’ album cuts then slip into Haitian Creole, nod to ritualistic healing practices and then to Thirstin Howl III. On Pray for Haiti’s opening song, “The 26th Letter,” Mach-Hommy raps about a sort of alchemy: “It’s crazy what y’all can do with some old Polo and ebonics.” The spectral Newark rapper’s work blurs the sounds and images of past lives, be they rap songs from his adolescence or his ancestors dating back generations. ![]()
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