Album Review: Live at the Tabernackle Vol. II by Estee Nack & Mike Shabb
Three years after the first Tabernackle service, the Lynn, Massachusetts MC and his Montreal producer turn in the tightest sustained rapping of Estee Nack’s run.
Lynn, Massachusetts, an archaic shoe-leather city ten miles north of Boston, has been exporting its loudest form of underground rap for a decade. Estee Nack came up there through Tragic Allies and made a discography so immense it’s nearly untraceable: nothing but dense, coded, Spanish-influenced lyricism delivered in a cursed, brusque howl. Montreal producer Mike Shabb compiled his first Tabernackle for him; this is the sequel, and Chris Mercedes is on the keys.
New arrival pat down at the door of “COMINOFAGE” protocol ever since a shorty got drugs in his overalls. The verses detail a complete apprenticeship: pills, powder and weed sold at every hour, phones rang at five, wrists ache with illegal whips in some joint, followed by couture ensembles and tour arrangements once the chips fell into place. The hook states, “Coming of age, I focused on my ways.” When fentanyl started to arrive in the packages, he was released, and rap became the currency of the wheeling and dealing. “JONRON” carries on the same theme with a baseball analogy, home runs arriving in the post, a brick flown to California and wrapped like a Christmas present, prison pen plights sounding like Hallmark cards, a drug dog you’d probably get a fix off with one nostril. If the trap was a game, they’re talking Series.
Most of “AFFAIRSINARGENTINA” takes place in Spanish, kicked down by Shabb’s warmest, coolest hypnotic loop and low-slung drums. Nack checks a palm reader, spills whiskey by the quart, blows all the bread he previously hoarded in the kitchen: “Mad ounces of the medicina/Tryna get the queens, and that’s my only doctrine.” A ship departs North Carolina as he’s gazing over Medellín valley with friends, and the verse continues to migrate among hemispheres and hotel bars without ever crossing borders. He leaves the woman hanging on his arm the second she ceases to be of use.
Then on “CHRISTRO” the sample takes a lake of gospel-moistened keys and a slow head-nod loop while a preacher’s sermon naturalizes it; you only know other sounds when the voice makes things out front, godless ears only hear roughshod, pure words matter not, laughter general on both sides. “ESTUPIDO” shivers its aural edges through a fat reggae patter with late-wimpy bones, “tried to bring a pocket knife into a gunfight” is the mockery-driven hook, the flow eases in and out of mad-dog references to the Quran and snitch on sight in the lost measure. Smaller, scratched-up loop on “MADPHILOSOPHIES,” the drums pointed and rickety, a rocky ditch where Nack glides thicky coke-trade rainisms and promethazine yelps and says, “Accidentally brilliant from penny pinching to plenty bidding,” his verse equally freely tacked even at full rage.
“STUDENTS&TEACHERS” is the longest class meeting time by a lot. Nack remembers stealing gold teeth as a ‘95 jit from some Miami hustlers, then mentions the gold in his own smile and how, for the remaining verse, he’s breaking down the Five Percent doctrine, the eighty-five and the five, the fact that the Black man did it all first, the universe, and that “I manifest with nothing, science doesn’t explain that”. Myalansky correlates his narcotics paper to a higher court of appeals (“But only God will be the judge of that”), while Raz Fresco has references layered so thick on the end, asking what other word people would use to call him God.
On CRIMEAPPLE-assisted “PINKCANDY,” Nack comes feverishly rolling into flavored water with club night cocaine, epics, and all the while he’s pushing product for eight to dawn while the feds just stay out of his way. Codenine holds court on “TRIUMPHANTALLIES,” with more poolside mimosas, a quick Satoshi Nakamoto drop, and arrangements like the Vienna Philharmonic. And then Daniel Son closes out the album on “VPNZ4THEDARKWEB” with Mercedes coming back in on keys lower and heavier this time for a more dire and dangerous outing, with all of Nack’s paranoia and Son’s survivalist rhetoric being put to use.
The flunkies that survive are minimal-deliberate. “PINPIN” boffs in and out, a shattering of white in the Macklemore sense, green-card offer to a docile burro with no tag line. “WINTERMISSION” spins after white’s abort of the restart, pals on the phone crying into the abyss for visual confirmation of children unwrapping birthday gifts, Nack slip-ghosts over the smoke of the airfield. Both are fine as what they are, but fizzle out before any overzealous lyric-subject gets lit up twice.
The punch-line factory hits fastest on “BREAKFASTBITCH”—Boris Yeltsin, Zelda, Prada, in the span of about ten bars, with the requirement of a pesos prompt and parcels dispatched El Chapo-style. But hidden amongst the puns is the cipher, “And time waits for no on/The samurai gotta serve the shogun.” The minutes had become months spent amassing this knowledge, and now he is glad to be back; he spits, and for the first and last time, the machine has the breath to sustain the thought he needs it to carry.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “AFFAIRSINARGENTINA,” “STUDENTS&TEACHERS,” “VPNZ4THEDARKWEB”