the First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap

Album review

R.A.P. Ferreira is restless as a creator and a performer—refusing stasis in the former role, throwing knuckleballs in the latter, and remaining unpredictable in ways that seem to rely on the power of being inscrutable. It's the type of underground hip-hop where the statement "never will you figure us out" is a challenge to be risen up to, and Ferreira's collab here with Tokyo glitch-hop vet Fumitake Tamura (aka Bun) is like a sparring session for the taste profiles of open-minded heads. It's not that The First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap is inaccessible as much as it juxtaposes familiar elements in ways that seem almost iconoclastically counterintuitive. The first time we hear his voice on opener "humble vessel" it's through Auto-Tune, once the signifier of state-of-the-art sound in 2000s pop that now feels like a remnant of another era rife for avant-garde retrofitting. But that's just the most obvious example of how Ferreira and Tamura connect to the struggle between old traditions and unexplored territory.

As a rapper, Ferreira spits bemused poetry and acidic defiance in the tradition of Saul Williams and Mike Ladd—not to mention the likes of Freestyle Fellowship and Antipop Consortium, whose respective members Self Jupiter and Hprizm notch resonant, era-bridging guest verses. 

He infuses his work with an additional generation's worth of post-underground art rap line-blurring to keep his flow lively and his smarts unpretentious, as nice with a shout-along hook as he is with a more conversationally abstract cadence. Tamura's beats take the textural, beat-dragging experimentation of the post-Dilla/Low End Theory wave into countless corners—reflective soul-jazz ("Jes' Grew in Osaka") shares space with bottle-clink / tape-hiss minimalism ("culture war patriots") and trap-via-Hyperdub bangers ("mr. susan type slapper") without losing sight of a holistic sense of exploratory curiosity. Or, as Ferreira puts it on "hereing color, green," "I like when the beat sound like God laughing." And, per "47 rockets taped to my chair (for dr. refaat alareer)," maybe it's better to go for that feeling of intangible misdirection that eventually points you towards the right path:  "There's some things you can't know/ But you can feel 'em though." © Nate Patrin/Qobuz