Album Review: Stephon Barbury by UllNevaNo & Philth Spector
A Baltimore rapper merges his name with a Coney Island point guard’s, and the Philly producer behind him chops less than he repeats.
The criticism writes itself. Another fundamentalist throwback record, the kind of underground boom-bap LP that mistakes restraint for rigor. Inside “Oh Lord,” a Stephon Marbury broadcast clip runs over the intro, and the placement seems to confirm it, a player whose mythos was discipline scored to drums that refuse to flex. Except the spectacle is sitting inside the punchlines. On “Ankle Injury” alone, UllNevaNo sets Ben Grimm on fire, breaks ankles “like Stephon in Air One sneakers,” and uses Capadonna’s album cover to describe his own rhyme density.
Through the color tapes, UllNevaNo’s one-producer rule held. He rapped over Kev Brown’s instrumentals on The Color Brown and 9th Wonder’s on I WONDER what color ima use next as a fidelity exercise. Shammgod with MANHE was punchline-stacked. Baby Jordan kept that density. The Ghost of Reggie Lewis with God Sense Beats in 2022 turned the partnership into elegy. Stephon Barbury is where Philth Spector (a member of the $$$ collective) wins his pacing argument for the first time. He worked chronologically through the Philadelphia International catalog as sample-selection study. “I Understand It Now” lets the old-school sample while UllNevaNo talks his shit.
Life L.O.N.G. arrives on “AND1 Trash Talk Tee” with a raspy, cartoon-elastic delivery that bounces off the snare. After UllNevaNo had just packing references into a smooth grounded cadence, the Brooklyn guest opens “Shake, shake, you erase your picture like Etch A Sketch/Me and you never know, double up and break ankles next.” UllNevaNo answers by tightening: “Contemporary, classic urban sportsman reporting live from Manhattan” sits as a baton-pass instead of a contest. Life L.O.N.G.’s “Skip to my lou, doing tricks/Double dribble, punch kick” supplies the live tumbling UllNevaNo had only described two bars earlier as “Complex syllable syncopations/The vocal gymnast.”
“Yellow Jackets” opens over horns that sound triumphant before UllNevaNo’s first bars even settle: “Unforgettable phenomenon, I’m a rare sight/Being off-worldly could chew on beats, the snare is white.” The introduction packs eight bars with six punchlines that cycle through Bruce Leroy’s glow, writing-from-Iceland temperature, crop-circle hover, “different types of wordplay and techniques I discover,” and “rhymes that remind me of Capadonna’s album cover.” DJ illMEASURED’s scratches cut into pocket-restoring breath between verses. Wu-style posse energy fills a song with no posse on it. The next verse reroutes to Baltimore: “From B-More, home of the Ouija board/Got a lot ghosts, Annie Holiday/I use your debut album as an ashtray.” Late in the first verse, “Healing factor, womb trap body armor, is still heather gray” arrives like a clearing in the density.
Opening “Flowers Given” on two funerals in one day (“Transition from natural causes and not the gunplay”), UllNevaNo builds the rhymes out of proper nouns. Mookie brought a copy of the Source. Tim dubbed Mobb Deep tapes. A basketball dream got chased on a military base. Sandals walked through K-State winters while Ken’s family took him in over school break, and November sent him to Long Beach with Cam “helping to devise a plan, word.” Adrian and Monstra rode the same elevator. Next section runs through cyphers “in front of the barracks” with Jay and Pressure “every third Monday,” through Season of the Microphone, through abandoned row homes. Mind the People’s “passion for MF DOOM” pointed UllNevaNo toward Below the Heavens on MySpace. Forty bars of proper nouns later, UllNevaNo arrives at: “Flowers given, move like a transmission/For the transition, I switch my position/Had to stop speaking and listen.”
Eight bars open six universes inside “I praise a Bruce Leroy, I found the glow/This writing in Iceland, they say my sound’s so cold/Over crop circle, field planes hover.” That same metric repeats on “AND1 Trash Talk Tee” (“Hampton burger helper gloves backhanded/Shoot up your establishment/Flame aces, trench coats, Gambit”) and again across “From B-More, home of the Ouija board/Got a lot ghosts, Annie Holiday/I use your debut album as an ashtray,” and somewhere around reference five a listener gets pulled out of attention and into spectatorship. Then “I Got Time Today” pays homage to MF DOOM at the top and holds one thought still for two bars: “Today’s penmanship is not taken serious/It’s easier in acceptance.” Two bars, one register, zero swerves. The bar density tic is something this record can switch off when it chooses to.
The standout track, “Newlyweds,” gets it name by UllNevaNo before any verse arrives: “I’m about to get vulnerable for a minute, you know what I mean?/October 16th is when my life changed, you know what I mean?” Then he promises, “This verse is not gonna be filled with syllable acrobatic punchlines,” and the album’s reference-tournament posture goes dark for four minutes. From the Bella Aduce hotel to marriage counseling. “Homies from BWY,” “Traveling through six-nine-five the first time,” “Seeing the Ravens fading good morning skyline.” Across the wedding walk (“Under a black bow and I’m strutting till I got you open/My groomsmen follow suit, they formed a line/Took a deep breath and realized it’s about that time/To see my bride, God’s long-awaited prize/Goddamn, she’s fine/Train was longer than the church praise as she stride/Tried to be a tough guy, it brought tears to my eyes”), no basketball metaphor enters. Closing bars: “Pics attached with the hashtag on Instagram/Then Thomas is engraved on the floor, a hologram/And by the time you hear this, celebrate the sonogram.” A wedding-day verse that gets a sonogram in.
Stephon Marbury left the NBA, sold a basketball shoe that worked as well as the $150 ones, then won three CBA titles with the Beijing Ducks on his own terms. The “Oh Lord” interlude lifts the broadcast clip (“Passed to himself/He deflected it off D-Miles, who had turned his head/Three in a row/Here’s another look at that, uh, most unique maneuver by Stephon Marbury/I don’t know if he actually makes contact”). UllNevaNo merged his name with Marbury’s on the spine. He recorded a wedding vow verse and a punchline tournament for the same record. One Philly producer was allowed to chronologically work through Philadelphia International’s shelves until the room was right. Pass to yourself off another player’s skull. Stomp the loop in your own sneaker.
Standout (★★★★½)
Favorite Track(s): “Yellow Jackets,” “Flowers Given,” “I Got Time Today,” “Newlyweds”