Album Review: My Uncle Told Me Some Real Ass Sh*t on the Phone Yesterday by zayALLCAPS
Producing nearly all of it himself, the rapper turns a run of unanswered calls into a funny, self-incriminating album about needing people who don’t need him.
The raps on the producer’s instrumentals would often feel like a demo tape to a producer—except with raps on top. zayALLCAPS, out of Sacramento with residencies in LA, produced almost all of these experimental-esque songs and was credited with all with one of the best album titles in recent memory with My Uncle Told Me Some Real Ass Sh*t on the Phone Yesterday. “Satellite” covers a satellite in a tube connecting to his cell phone, a drunk in the speed lane in a car at the wheel of his life, and Brodie’s weed that runs to the police on his cod, and ends with him looking at his own wrist and deciding, “A Rollie is just a watch, different signifiers, while we watch the planet die,” with fires raging in California, and the coronavirus that is conveniently being named without taking a second. He mentioned having to leave the institution first, and then getting lost off of soju with a woman he wishes he’d never tell anything to.
On “SIGNZ,” he lists the signs of warning he sees looming, and chooses to ignore them when a sign of stopping that he refuses to take down, a slippery floor sign in Spanish, an American Sign Language joke that wasn’t even about AOL and its giants, and a line assuring the denizen that everything is a go. He gets more humorously serious in one sentence on “infinity pool,” where somehow his magic can still be considered a hat trick, and he has no idea how he got pushed into rapping. He details his brother taking him to a place and orders some potion and some steak, to introducing himself as the credit card holder of Faith. Then everything was just too real, and from then on, he’s guessing and, in turn, claiming that he’s that guy, the sacrifice, the samurai lamb of Christ, a demigod, an idiot.
Josh Forehead makes an appearance on “Only 1ne,” and the writing is harder than usual, it did her wrong and swears he’s no monster, calls himself her sponsor and keeps old pictures until he feels like a stalker and ends up weighing her heart at a ton: “I guess that’s just the price of love.” zay’s sharing his hook is just as obvious, it’s just a text message about not talking too much and not opening up, while Anto the Wayward pulls the same stunt on “rQST Line” where their back-and-forth love becomes cosplay and she feels the need to call him by her own name. He’s stuck on a dial tone; he’s glad her phone’s muted; he’s in bed with someone new and still doing the introspection. zay gives us the lighter line there with radio spins and a new video and “getting faded like Arsenio,” which makes Anto sound like he wandered onto the wrong song.
No one chasing a woman in conworld’s verse on “Digital Jungle” he says the medium itself is the artform, then lists the burden that it is to him every day, the WeTransfer of himself through the clouds, passing in and out and waking up at war, the phone and the floor, the portfolio in at four thirty in the morning, the Portos with his bro to keep him going. Talking bout rollouts, rolling his eyes. zay’s hook is no thicker than that, a beautiful thing he gets in the digital jungle and that beautiful thing he gets in conworld’s verses when he’s with you, which is a lot of nothing, as he admits. His friends shout instead of cry, which he wishes he knew how.
Her Toyota’s in the shop on “SWOOP” so he gives her a ride, and that’s as smooth as he gets. First dates make him nervous. He can’t decide on a place. People say he has a type and he argues he has taste, then caves immediately and admits it’s the same archetype, just different faces. Tom and Jerry turns into Ben and Jerry’s. Tinted windows, cruise to Troop, and he’s hoping he’s getting respect for not being a fad. Later he calls himself a heartbreaker, recalls she wanted babies, and he said maybe, and admits to being rude and obnoxious with an attitude he considers trauma-based. “Ms. Tiery S-Curl” is the kinder, gentler version, a girl from Universe B that made his pulse do uneven loopy laps, and there’s no camera, 3D, or battery. That’s still distant enough to make him glad he can’t submerge himself. On “B3lieve dat,” ugonnaya wants to take him to shine and prepare the scene, fiends for the genuine article like Mary J lighting up Mary Jane, and tells him she believes in him the way he believes in her: “Believe in me like rosary beads.” She’s the only female on any of these tracks who responds to him.
His wordplay comes to a halt on “4skore,” with the score-for-that pun, the foldings fast rhyme, the simulation, the Flavor of Love bit, and getting dumb in between until they both get numb, all filling gaps where a flow should. He does the same with “CHANGEZ,” abandoning a great punchline- the one about him possibly being a fake, him possibly being distant, him giving his word, and having broken the agreement- in a string of rhymes about spider legs, an IHOP simile, and ballin in H-town like the Rockets. Entertaining and without attachments to anything.
On “BESTIE (TOKYO),” she finally breaks off from her verbal circling and asks, “Are we fuckin’, just friends or something?” The line is predicated by the same handful of instant-declarative-enabling words in which he dubs her his best friend and wishes they were good friends. Silas Short sings bass and guitars here and doesn’t sing. zay reminds her she is moving a great distance to a city that she will miss, reminds her he’s felt pinched even when he’s up, reminds her he’s hoping she’s good and something. (And she wants him to come home; she wants him to come over. When they’ve never really fixed anything, he calls her his Yoko (Ono), tells her to book him (don’t look for him), and warns that he’d never divorce a backseat. She refuses to choose between the three. Small as it is, he is talking, and the biggest thing he has to give is the front seat.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Satellite,” “infinity pool,” “SWOOP”