{"id":16416,"date":"2019-04-27T05:30:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T09:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16416"},"modified":"2019-03-25T16:29:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T20:29:24","slug":"album-review-sk-the-novelist-baggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/27\/album-review-sk-the-novelist-baggage\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Sk the Novelist &#8212; Baggage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-16417\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/sk_the_novleist.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/sk_the_novleist.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/sk_the_novleist-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/sk_the_novleist-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>West Asheville hip-hop artist Sk the Novelist is a member of local rap collective the Legion of D.O.O.M. This Legion is kindred spirits of\u2014but no relation to\u2014the similarly-named mash up group\/production team out of southern California. Sk (John Wilson) has been releasing music since at least 2014, when his EP <i>Return of the Emcee<\/i> featured \u201cLet the Trumpet Tell the Story,\u201d a track built around the melodic line from \u201cThe Battle Hymn of the Republic.\u201d That work established Sk\u2019s perspective, with lyrics such as \u201cI want society to look more like piano keys.\u201d It was followed by <i>R.I.P. To the Boom-Bap<\/i> in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>His 2015 single, \u201cUgly Jazz\u201d is pleasingly all over the map, shifting tempo, beat and style while delivering (occasionally NSFW) lyrics to re-emphasize his socially conscious messages about topics like \u201cFOX News straw-man coverage.\u201d In 2017 Sk released an album-length set, <i>10 Sk Tracks<\/i>. That collection featured collaborations with King Garbage, C. Shreve the Professor and others, and made effective use of re-purposed snippets of older jazz grooves. It also included a humorous cut, \u201cBeatleman\u201d drawing from the lyrics of the Liverpool legends.<\/p>\n<p>The latest release from Sk the Novelist is <i>Baggage<\/i>, a 12-track collection that once again finds the artist shifting between solo pieces and collaborations with fellow rappers. His Bandcamp page characterizes <i>Baggage<\/i> as \u201ca variety of styles, built over the course of two years.\u201d The centerpiece of <i>Baggage<\/i> is a rap battle between Sk and P.T.P., \u201cBones.\u201d The subject matter here leans more in a traditional hip-hop direction, away from overt (or even subtle) sociopolitical statements and toward themes of personal empowerment. A representative rhyme from Sk\u2019s first verse: \u201cI&#8217;m aware of my energy, I&#8217;m an arrogant entity \/ Got a confident ambiance and a lyrical chemistry.\u201d His rhymes are sharp and flowing.<\/p>\n<p>A collaboration with Free the Optimus, \u201cWoooo\u201d feels like a party track, with Sk spitting out rapid-fire rhymes. A line like \u201cparty don\u2019t start \u2018till we show up\u201d may not win points for originality, but there\u2019s no reason to doubt the good-natured sincerity of Sk and FTO.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll Yours \/ LIVE\u2019s Soliloquy\u201d reinforces Sk\u2019s theme of variety; his vocals sound almost like the work of a different rapper, yet they\u2019re not affected or forced; he seems to slip into different vocal personas with relative ease. Some Chipmunk-sounding sped-up vocals provide an intriguing contrast; they\u2019re mixed far enough back to work as an aural effect without distracting from the central vocal line.<\/p>\n<p><i>Baggage<\/i>\u2019s album cover art deserves mention. The \u201cworn LP jacket\u201d concept has been used many times before by countless artists in nearly every genre, but in this case it still seems fresh and fitting. Ricky Tale\u2019s design hearkens back to classic jazz album art of the 1950s, specifically releases on Impulse! and Sonny Rollins\u2019 <i>Volume 2<\/i> album from 1957. The latter was released on the venerable Blue Note label, and for Sk the Novelist\u2019s <i>Baggage<\/i> cover art, a modified version of the distinctive Blue Note logo (here with the phrase \u201cthe finest rap since 1995\u201d) is a prominent feature of the design. So while <i>Baggage<\/i> has relatively little connection to classic hard bop jazz of the previous century, its cover design shows that Sk has a sense of history, and an interest in finding his own place within it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>West Asheville hip-hop artist Sk the Novelist is a member of local rap collective the Legion of D.O.O.M. This Legion is kindred spirits of\u2014but no relation to\u2014the similarly-named mash up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,49,65],"tags":[237,3782],"class_list":["post-16416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hip-hop","category-new-release","category-review","tag-asheville","tag-sk-the-novelist","cat-36-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16418,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16416\/revisions\/16418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}