Album Review: CEREMONIAL by Black Milk
Twenty years in the same studio produced CEREMONIAL. Black Milk’s twelfth album has the confidence and the dirt to prove it.
Translator’s Note: Originally written in Japanese; translated into English for publication.
Curtis Cross has been rapping longer than he’s been producing, and nobody talks about him that way. He’s put out albums from Detroit under the name Black Milk for twenty years (nearly all self-produced, nearly all quiet), and CEREMONIAL is the newest—another album made alone at Stank Babies Studio with a handful of live players and practically no guests.
He started with Slum Village in high school, during the post-Dilla transition. Most of eLZhi’s The Preface, which was some of the best-produced Detroit rap of the 2000s, was his work. Random Axe, the group he formed with Sean Price and Guilty Simpson, lasted one album; Black & Brown! with Danny Brown had more life, and he co-produced through Jack White’s Third Man before Phat Kat, who’d encouraged him early, had to talk him into going solo.
A group of friends heads to a corner store on “Dreams Not Only Made at Night,” muted piano and steady drums underneath. Someone throws a five, the ride feels wrong, they pull up and another friend is down:
“Back on the news at five
Feel too familiar, never act too surprised.”
A woman follows a man she shouldn’t have into a car, watches him open a compartment, hears shots, ends up face-down on pavement screaming “what you got me into” while cops yell “hands behind your head, face to the floor,” and then Sam Walker’s spoken-word break drops in, deadpan: witnesses to a shooting. Every detail on the song belongs to somebody else. Is he reporting or mourning?
Saba raps about cold in summer heat on “OK... Nah,” naming Bernard McCullough (Bernie Mac’s government name, a Chicago nod) between lines about growing reclusive, his verse sitting between two from Cross, who opens screaming about police staying trigger happy and where spirits go and closes on a third verse about Detroit fur dragging across the floor and babies on the way. BJ the Chicago Kid sings “too real for this shit” on the closer, “YOUIT (Truth Be Told),” while Cross raps about moving in silence “like Charlie Chaplin” and calls his money “holy matrimony.” Brandon Myster handled the only outside beat.
“Angelo on the canvas, colorful on the basslines,” Cross raps on “In the Sky,” comparing himself to Michelangelo before saying people disappear like remotes sunk in a sofa. The comparison tightens; deeper in he’s painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, talking about a brush stroke that can’t dry. On “Right Time,” his accomplishments feel like “condiments sitting next to the main course” and his steps are giant “like Coltrane.”
Heavy drums and a dusty soul loop carry “CEREMONY” while a vocal chants the title over the top, no rapping, no arrangement, just production left to run. The other instrumentals are cleaner. This one has dirt on it.
Jarelle James’ drums on “Crash Test Dummy” crack with air behind every snare, someone hitting wood in a small room. Ian Fink’s keys on the instrumentals run loose and slow. They wander. The whole album was tracked at Stank Babies, the same studio Cross has been using for over a decade, and the room shows up on every song.
It’s been twenty years. But CEREMONIAL sounds like a session tape running after the red light turned off, the players still going, nobody counting minutes. Cross made it in the same room where he’s made everything, with musicians who sound like they’ve been in that room before, playing past the point where anyone told them to stop.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “In the Sky,” “Dreams Not Only Made at Night,” “OK... Nah”