Album Review: Better Than McDonald’s by Gangrene
The latest Gangrene album finds the rapper-producers Oh No and the Alchemist deep in their longest-running two-man outlet. One of its charms is hearing each man rap over the other’s ugliest beats.
The two titans of underground rap didn’t take this long to follow-up with 2024’s Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. Oh No was brought up by Oxnard in a home filled with records, a younger brother to Madlib; the Alchemist was afforded his first rap gig with the Whooliganz in Beverly Hills by his uncle DJ Muggs. Together AS Gangrene, they make up half the underground rap production, and the meeting the two keep with each other is the place where loops get chosen on the basis of how ugly they are, and the two rap stoned, angry, and pleased with themselves. They do this throughout the entire length of Better Than McDonald’s, speaking of food, beef, and murder over samples no sane producer would ever give a client, and cut each guest a beat that is tailored to his voice (beyond the eye-rolling album cover).
The contrast is the client work, the smoothed-over daytime sound both men put behind them once stepping into Gangrene. The Alchemist’s beats carry a sense of heaviness and detachment from the listener, and his own rap is delivered in dry, precise chunks. Over the rising organ melody of “Note Ascension,” he crowns himself “the most dominant piece on the chessboard” and “runs cold like when you turn over the pillowcase,” while Oh No answers in rubber boots and janitor fashion, prepared to clean up the mess, feeding the dead rivals’ peanut brains to circus elephants. The Alchemist takes “Muscle Head” even further into its minimalism with a single low loop and does his seasoning by himself, being Jimmy Spice, adding pepper to things, jamming hard rock for a world he perceives as disco. Oh No, on the contrary, builds with a little more punch. His beats are made of jumpy mid-range loops and busy drums, and “Run Downs” is the pick of them, an irritating phrase playing over a static snare pocket while he cuts out the stones from the quarry bedrock, leaving a rival’s head hanging in the wind like Ned Stark’s, and clearing fiends like NasoneX. The Alchemist is there and sounds personally offended about something, complaining about “too much pretty and fluffy things in rap” and loosening his cufflinks just like Frank and Sam did before they slapped the heck out of him on the Tropicana.
At least half of the threats come from a menu, Oh No saying “We making OG chicken like it’s Church’s” on “Forever” and offering to split in two a rival in a two-piece. Although the track is actually built around the durability chants which Oh No and the Alchemist sell much more enthusiastically somewhere else, drum patterns providing all of the motion forward for the loop which remains in place. The duo gets their idiom right on “King Taco,” where the Alchemist adds hours, minutes, and seconds to his weightlifting routine and would rather “be doing the serving than critiquing how the burger tastes,” a phrase that perfectly sums up the Gangrene’s entire job description, while Ab-Soul floats in between calling himself the prophet who they fear and telling “A little bit of hate’ll take you a long way.”
Estee Nack makes the most extreme turn of all the visitors with the chopped-up tightness of “The Xtract,” twisting the track around his syllables, addicts jumping around while wearing their clothes backwards like Kris Kross, repeat customers glitching like the Matrix, and an ending rant about mustard gas and opium which makes it funnier than the punchlines of most rappers who actually write lyrics. Rome Streetz carves through the industrial sound of “Gas Factory” with more aggression than both of the hosts, beats a competitor like a stepchild, leaves a trail of dead bodies from Brooklyn to Britain, and rides away flipping off people on camera in a whip bumping “Broken Language.” The Alchemist sets “Broken Language” up with a rival, serves him some uncooked chicken, and takes a pot of gold from a leprechaun.
In “Errybody,” the beat is low and boxed up, and billy woods feels right at home, staying remote from a studio apartment which might as well be a castle surrounded by a moat, running from the stove like the gingerbread man, and learning that “Footprints in the sand was man’s walkin’ in circles,” all of it over a ELUCID hook of “Can’t be everything to errybody.” The hosts keep up with their heavy company. Oh No informs you that you have the wrong doctor if you think that he came to heal you, and the Alchemist leads an orchestra like rap’s Serge Rachmaninoff, before dunking his own head in a sink of water and shutting off the tap. Meyhem Lauren gets the slower crawl of “Microscopic Matter” and is right at home in the beat, married to the game with cocaine and paper being his best man. His sales pitch is patience, and the beat gives him no reason to hurry.
Boldy James receives the best suite in the house: the intense and solid pocket made by The Alchemist for “Sasquatch,” which he walks into with a lazy swagger, having grown into a man who counts “Sex, money, murder, dope, and guns” as love and tells everyone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that “Gangsters don’t dance, nah, baby, we don’t hold hands.” While the Alchemist raps right behind him in an almost giggly way, chain attached to his genitals and Hennessy in his veggies, with Oh No driving the crazy metal between the two with a sweet tooth.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Gas Factory,” Errybody,” Sasquatch”