Album Review: Bo Jackson by Boldy James & The Alchemist

Such a lack of humor is a great asset.

Courtesy of ALC / Boldy James

Taken from Phil’s defunct blog, The Wax Report, an extensive review of the most important albums, covering everything from production to lyricism and overall cohesiveness.

“If I seem distant and reserved” sings a vocal sample on probably the most intense beat of Bo Jackson. It was somewhat unusual, but only fair, to leave the blurb of Boldy James’ new penny novel to this echo from the yellow-grey record box past. The third full-time collaboration of Detroit’s dark spitter and the legendary producer is his best so far. Bo Jackson is a quiet, antisocial album about life on the corner, which you would otherwise pass by with a tight step. Alchemist builds a monument to his sense of sample cinematics, and James raps himself in a woodcut world in which he is the most unreal and real character at the same time.

James is great at creating a concise scene with a short setup. Often, he only raps a bit past the tried-and-tested trapper phrases, but this one detail is enough to reveal the underlying reality from the trapped decal. “E.P.M.D, everybody plottin’ my demise/I marvel at the sight of ‘caine, I love to watch it rise” reminds on “E.P.M.D” of the realities of drug deals. “Real street sh*t, ain’t no sitcoms,” he later comments on his approach.

This lack of humor is a great good. Boldy James doesn’t sound like a rapper who wants to sell you something. That’s why he rarely tells a continuous story; he never sounds like an OG delimited from the game, who rolls in his memories and wisdom, and his voice is constantly fogged by a tipping haze and stunned by the last Xanax pill. The monotony and casualness with which he speaks merge with the lively changes of theme that link his thoughts in the same part. The wisdom of his grandmother, a lesson in language, a short ego flight, and a subtle threatening gesture to the competition can be so intertwined that you don’t even feel their alternation.

So he stacks up his very own cabinet of figures over the running time, which is depicted so accurately that at some point, there is almost an unreal shimmer floating over the album. Perhaps the references to Ghoule, Dungeons, and Micheal Myers that he already pronounces on the opener, “Double Hockey Sticks,” make his scenes in Detroit appear like the last moments in a pulp novel before the supernatural intervenes. “Free Lenny, I know he homesick/He used to always leave his screen door open, you enter at your own risk,” he evokes within two bars on “Steel Wool” a whole existence to the beat, as idiosyncratic and morbid as a film noir.

But James is not the orchestrator but the leading figure in his cabinet. For this to work so smoothly and for the world to appear as lively as it does, it needs a correspondingly incredible sonic base. And The Alchemist is absent on Bo Jackson to play. In terms of composition and arrangement, it could be his best beats so far, and the amount of subtle and noticeable movements he creates from complicated braided samples is impressive. Sometimes, it is a linear, wooden piano that makes the loop dusty in the best 90s manner, and then it turns in one fell swoop into pieces of city noise and feedback before an artfully distorted voice piece opens.

Highlights are the bluesy melancholy on “Diamond Dallas,” the cinematic arrangement of a female voice on the storytelling masterpiece “Illegal Search & Seizure,” or the claustrophobically processed soul number for “Turpentine.” But not everything in this alchemist universe is artistic and abstract. Sometimes, he gets the thick BoomBap boards out here. When was the last time a simple boom stack was as bad as on “Steel Wool,” “Speed Trap,” or “Brickmile to Montana”?

It makes you doubly fun if you skillfully get into the feature box for these very bangers. Benny the Butcher comes on the latter track with a career-high feature around the corner; the faster flow brings him refreshingly out of the slowly somewhat well-known mode. Earl Sweatshirt and Roc Marciano participate in the macabre nostalgia of “Photographic Memories.” Freddie Gibbs hits the plaster with Curren$y for “Fake Flowers.”

Every guest post hits the mark, and one immediately understands the morbid, gloomy vein that flows through this album. But it wouldn’t have needed any of them. The bag in which Boldy James and the alchemist are on Bo Jackson leaves you speechless. James changes the flows and rhyme schemes effortlessly as if pushing a cigarette from the left to the right corner of his mouth. The alchemist digs so deep into his sound archive that his psychedelic, dark production walks through the channels like a primitive form of life. Both paint pictures that burn themselves in. Images of cold, defense, and hostility in the gigantic dungeon labyrinth when they got to know Detroit’s underworld. Or to say it with the all-summarizing words: “If I seem distant and reserved”—this album explains why.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “E.P.M.D,” “Photographic Memories,” “Fake Flowers”