Album Review: Hardbody by Nickelus F
The Richmond rapper-producer’s new album makes its dealer-boasting answer to the daughters and winter coats it pays for, and stays funny throughout.
This household on Hardbody was paid for by drug money, and so the household turns up in the various verses to collect. Nickelus F wrote and recorded every beat on this album for himself, and it was released through Trick Dice, returning with his second album of the year, following The Undisputed. He buys guns to protect his daughters, remembers winter coats going on layaway, cracks a granite countertop in an argument, and funds it all with weight. That is to say, the dealing and the fathering are one job.
On “Sporting Life,” he’s up at witching hours, making beats; the block is hot as a lava lake; young men in Richmond are ready to go up and blow your mom away; pounds are still shipping. But in vinyl weight, he’s counting the sales, then the graveyards that he’s populating. Then he’s making comparisons between his life and a body that cannot conceive, and he’s counting the money as the harvest anyway. “My life been like a bitch that never ovulate/But still, I bear fruit, just look at all the profit made” on “Set the Table.” On this song, he explains the accusations of a stranger. People used to doubt him considering he had a father in the house, and now he’s buying guns for his daughters to protect them. He’s holding a flood of emotions back like the Hoover Dam. He’s blacking out so hard that every verse should be redacted. Not only that, but he’s pouring Louis into a paper cup as he’s telling you that the money that didn’t change you means you didn’t make enough.
Nick walks his kids on “The Leg Drop” past junkies jumping in the intersection, women out working for a dollar, and police who watch it all from their cars and wave. News crews come when there are ratings in it, and they run the thing black and white when it is a gradient. Local broadcast audio about things that go bump at night in Shockoe Bottom opens “Slave Ghosts,” and the broadcast has ghosts as a tourist attraction. For Nick, there are more slave ghosts in Richmond than anywhere else, and they all haunt him. The only thing that he can give in terms of hugs is his weaponry. In his leisure time, he is a venomous coil of a man, ready to strike. He has book smarts and hood sense. The Prada hook stitch on the Woolrich clip would be something that he would wear. He has a missing tooth that he doesn’t like to show off, but he is a cheesy kind of dude anyway. There is a bush that looks like a big suit of clothes that walks down the street that Nickelus F would recognize anywhere.
Nick tracks your movements over the course of a month on “A Mountain of Bones” before anything can happen to you. Throughout the song, Nick displays persistence that carves a canyon like a river of time, and a gaze so intense it slices through the air like a venomous dart. For rainy days, Nick is ready. He built the ark with his own two hands. In the verse, he describes how he splits the top of your head like an onion to get to the point where he can cause the most amount of pain. A woman hands him the jaws of a killer shark, and he promptly swings back at her like the artist in the Thriller artwork, Michael Jackson. A scattering crowd awaits as if they will be served as food, while Nick climbs the Mountain of Bones searching for a view from the top.
On “Kikkomanm,” the sounds of cracking granite fill the final moments of Nick’s argument with a family member. His temper, as he calls it, prevents his children from growing up with a healthy relationship with their father. Therefore, his legacy with his kids will be unpleasant. He attempts to stop procrastinating. The communication between family members is said to be terrible by him. Instead of dealing with pain and turmoil in his life, Nick can grow by putting up a pull-up bar above his doorframe. The alter ego of “Vulcan” is a young boy who does not sleep. But instead lies awake thinking about how he will be put in jackets and coats that his mom has put on layaway to provide for her son. The rapper takes Motrin before he brushes his teeth, mixes nothing with his liquor, and divides the pie to survive off the quotient. The anger of the listener toward how Nick ate is said to be misplaced by the rapper.
In the show-stealing “Tiamat,” Blu pens a fervently enthusiastic rap that deals with various subjects; he rhymes that describe the Mansions in the Sky of the cabins that he grew up in. In “Duffle,” Rome Streetz handles his verse where he talks about what he would do to a rival’s record. He urges other rappers to trash their pens, and to put Newports on the cover of their albums, and he samples the sound in a subsequent song.
On “A Coherent Beam of Pure Energy,” he writes about nothing happening to many nouns (notified and mobilized), some of them oversized, each one of them notarized, flutes playing, a cobra rising from the depths, a party on a yacht. For a long time he’s been wanting to say something to the county cops (containing people) and the city cops (who don’t care whether you pay them or not). Everything leading up to that is just filler. On “Final Form,” he’s going back to affirmations that he repeats every day, as well as all the transformations that he’s going through right now. The language here is not particularly original and could easily sit on any number of songs without adding anything to the mix.
An unwrinkled mattress without a bed frame sits beside the finest of the executive suites on “The Emergence.” He describes in detail how wages are garnished off a debt claim and lists in detail the various physical scars he received from the various events that he wouldn’t explain in any great amount of detail. At the end of the track, Nelly tells him not to let his head hang and to get up on that stage and make them headbang. In “Dr. Strange,” he describes his everyday work life, climbing a mountain of work to reach the top in his field. He’s got a hundred ways to beat the system, and he keeps the lion’s share of the profits with only a few drippings left over for the likes of you. Social media is just another drug for attention-seekers, he says. He was in a deep vision, and then the prophecy was given to him. He isn’t adding anything to the text, just reading it out word for word.
His kids present their plays on “Acid Rain,” the pain and suffering converted to financial gain. Below that, he is gathering lumps of coal for the various stocking stuffers. He moves silently through the woods on padded paws, like a hunter. He leaves behind tire tracks for anyone who reaches out for them. The hook to this song is the drug money that someone uses to answer to him. He returns to the skeletons in his closet, and we’re given a highlight reel of his life, complete with a Nike ad.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Slave Ghosts,” “Kikkoman,” “A Mountain of Bones”