Album Review: IDK I'M HAIGH BABYS FIRST MIXTAPE by Mona Lisa

Sometimes when my vision contracts I wonder if this tiny community of hipster internet geeks sharing each others music isn't really just a glorified circle jerk; a self-congratulatory circular feed-back loop, the participants of which imagine is somehow the center of the cultural universe. And then along comes something so legitimate, so underground and fresh, that it completely restores the conviction that this cultural nexus, the DIY-internet-underground-music-scene, really IS the top of the cultural pyramid. It's everything mainstream culture isn't; authentic, organic, innovative and dynamic.

Calling this a 'mixtape'  modestly eschews the pretensions of a 'debut album', but IDK I'M HAIGH is a debut as self-assured and confident as any I've heard.  Mona Lisa is the triple threat; a rapping singer songwriter with a gift for hooks and a flair for production. Think Kitty Pryde meets Panda Bear. Despite each track having its' own producer, they are all indelibly stamped with Mona Lisa's unique vocal tone and fully developed vocal arrangements that elevate them to the status of songs.  IDK is indisputably her album.

While Mona Lisa is a rapper, the songs do not sit comfortably in any established microgenre, and clearly transcending the narrow limits of  cloud rap.  IDK contains elements of trap, witch house and, most interestingly, dream pop, but fused into a coherent synthesis of just about everything going on in net music.

The album flows nicely. The "IDK I'm High" motif is woven into many of the tracks, and the dreamy vocal arrangements reinforce the thematic unity of the set. Three of the songs  deserve special mention. "Nice Boys" is a bona-fide pop hit. Producer Lautlos provides  a spare, shimmering bed over which the three rappers deliver a hypersexy, femmed-out paen to hetero-norm relationships. Guests rappers Babeolf Hitler and Brooklyn White (who also did the cover art) step up with some seriously dope verses. The Shisa-produced "CTRL + ALT"  is instantly addictive, its' cartoonish twee vocal hook sticking in your head like gum to your shoe. "System e r r o r",  with its' basic track by d0lphin sp,  is a  vocal tour-de-force, with beautifully blissful  vocal loops swirling,  as Mona Lisa sings an amazing and emotional song with almost a rock sensibility,  even while rapping some of the verses. The result had me standing on the roof fist-pumping again, which I haven't done in a while; a perfect fusion of dream pop and trap.

Mainstream "artists" like Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus enjoy access to the best songwriters, first class producers, and the best of everything,  but all the money in the world can't  buy the artistic legitimacy or substitute for the authenticity of real teenage street-swag. 

With other great tracks by fellow Florida producers Miles Farewell and ZDG, Houston's SHMX,  4llsouls of the Netherlands and TRAP DANiEL$. 

Download IDK I'M HAIGH BABYS FIRST MIXTAPE and follow Mona Lisa on Soundcloud and Facebook.

Track: D/P/I - ENDORSEMENT (IMAGEREVISION)

L.A. producer D/P/I was unknown to me until Soundcloud followed an AyGeeTee track I was listening to with this amazingly dope number.

Tales From The Trap House: PARTY TRASH's "a very thoed tape"

Party Trash's "a very thoed tape" is a collection of beats - some are simple sketches, others are fully developed tracks, all worthwhile and interesting. At 25 tracks, there's something from every part of the spectrum. I knew Party Trash mainly from his drags, but much of this material is closer to J Dilla type stuff than witch house. Drag is certainly still an element here, but Party Trash has integrated the technique fully, using it as just one of the many tools in his arsenal of effects.

"Honey Bee", for instance, is perfect chillwave, while "I Don't Know Why" exploits the drag technique to beautiful rather than wicked effect. "Call My Name" is a wicked hard rocking trap beat, "Can I Say I Love You?" is a damaged, blissed-out mess-of-a-track that sounds like the future passed. All good stuff, "a very thoed tape" is the best Party Trash release to date.

Real Trap Shit: Download the G88gle LP

I posted a link to a shorter version of this almost a year ago, but the artists kept adding tracks. This is one of the finest things to emerge from "trap music".  I am still working on figuring out what "trap" is... something to do with hip-hop influence for sure, but I'm not buying the notion that it's Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy etc. That's straight hip-hop / rap made by guys who actually ran traps, but it has nothing to do with what they are calling "trap" in Europe. Gediminas tells me that people are calling the music on his channel "trap" (it's chillwave). So "trap" is simply the latest viral mutating musical meme to emerge from the post-witch-chillwave internet scene, and the connection to Gucci Mane and other "d-boy" self-mythologized drug-dealing artists is tenuous at best, or non-existent, and the term really doesn't mean a goddamn thing other than indicating something is part of a stream of fresh DIY / chillwave / bedroom-produced, hip-hop influenced music.

The G88gle project is the  result of  a fruitful collaboration between two of my favorites - Ectoplasm and Party Trash, with support on selected tracks from the likes of Coyote Clean Up, Dirty Pharms and Top Girls and FrzE.

So check out "B88M", the appropriately named lead track, which slams and booms with something like the energy of a small bomb,  or the hauntingly beautiful "Hollow", and prepare for blast-off with the soaring "Juice". Grab this shit before the whim of caprice prompts Sam to take it down again, or add rap to the tracks.