Album Review: It Made Sense at the Time by B-Movie Millionaires
Reunited as B-Movie Millionaires, Lee Scott and Black Josh turn drink, drugs, and their own heads into one of the year’s funniest, best-written rap albums.
Blah Records operates out of the north-west of England, founded by Lee Scott, who raps and produces from Runcorn. Black Josh raps from Manchester. Both belong to the Cult of the Damned, and as B-Movie Millionaires they put out a self-titled EP in 2015 and then Attack of the 50,000ft Sweg Lawds from Outer Space. It Made Sense at the Time sets the two of them trading verses about drinking, dealing, football, wrestling, their families, and their own heads. Over classic and gritty rap beats, King Kashmere built the first beat, Spectacular Diagnostics most of what came after, and Scott four of them himself.
Josh answers Scott in italics halfway through “ICL,” pushing fentanyl at a woman who wants Fenty, clocking a man who acts like a good fella and is really Henry Hill. A hangover on “SOZ” becomes a drive out to a weed farm in Andover, a blunt the size of a lamb’s shoulder, a rival buried like pavlova, and a chorus that apologizes and then declines to elaborate: “Don’t ask me what I’m doing, I’m doing it just because.” Sly Moon takes the same road through “HEX” and comes out the other end dressed like a mob lord in a trackie at the board meeting.
Josh had been gone for ages when “316” catches up with him, lost in stasis, off his meds, dropping the day shift to sell drugs and losing his main girl over it. Midway through the verse he stops and asks, “What the fuck was I talking about?” then starts again on the sight of somebody’s mother snorting down the Wetherspoons, getting aggy with him when he wouldn’t sort her out. He kept the derailment in the take, which is funnier than whatever punchline he lost track of. Nickelus F takes the last verse steadier, watching cool people go lame and enemies trade fake smiles before making records about laying each other down, everybody still living in the same town.
Scott dresses for his age in a straitjacket with shades on, calls himself relatable as the red letters in your drawer or a plastic bag of rubbish on your kitchen floor, and files MCs as fads, like Supreme collabs, all inside one verse of “LAA.” He perambulates through a bland estate on “MED,” adding color to a permanent gray firmament, and gets around to explaining that he could have played for Liverpool but tore his meniscus. He paints pictures while you draw audible winces, and moonwalks across thin ice without slipping. “This ain’t dope it’s medicinal drugs,” the chorus clarifies, and he wants unconditional love in the same breath.
On “KEV,” Scott wishes he could care a little bit more, and he means it against himself. A fish sprouts legs and peels off its fin to rush around underground on wheels. He fights through the venue just to sigh into the mic, misses social cues, opens brews with his teeth. Scott raps on “REX,” he’s in worse shape, pacing a room, chatting to itself like a leader addressing a nation, then catching a crippling hesitation and wondering why its self-worth hasn’t grown to reflect inflation. Best to repress it, the verse decides, until it comes back on the edge of the deepest sleep in years. “Yesterday they called me the king, now they call me a clown,” goes the chorus. A later verse hears that death is around the corner and almost cracks a smile, then puts the ambition plainly, which is eating rather than buying a fleet. The last verse remembers a mother saying not to be a puppy show.
Two MCs go back and forth to make up an entire “BAR” in the course of a single evening: a dark room, there isn’t a coaster for your drink, and the bottle almost breaks a tooth as you crack it open. He has the hotel address and doesn’t think he’ll be sleeping on any shit; the second man doesn’t have enough cash to catch a cab anyway. At the very end, just the last minute, he becomes clear-headed and asks if he’s all right, mate. The other admits he didn’t ask him.
When his stepdad passed away, Scott resolved to “SMH” to sort his life out; getting himself sorted meant working for a month before quitting and walking out the door during a shift with a lit joint in his mouth, with enough money in his pocket to buy an ounce and a bus ticket to the city. The household he describes before that is nan being a bit mad, uncle gone nuts, biological father going in and out of prison, and stepdad on the pint down the pub. He says he’s learned how to do this by using a pirated program on a dodgy laptop, and his baby ma said he wears his mental problems well. Josh walks out of a terraced house with blocks in the background, walks past the flat that was burgled and the corner shop that was taped off, and ends on his auntie splitting an inheritance. Blood doesn’t guarantee trust. He counted money when the Queen passed away.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “REX,” “BAR,” “SMH”