Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire is without a doubt the most underrated rapper of all-time, which I base on simple mathematics. Ratio of Instagram followers to talent. It sucks that eX didn’t come up in the social media age, as he would’ve had significantly more followers. His breakout track “Huzzah!” was huge in 2011, and led to a legendary remix “The Last Huzzah!” that featured some of the hottest artists in 2011, which has racked up 4.2M views on YouTube. The single had obvious mainstream appeal and led to him getting signed for over a $1M record deal, which for an underground artist was huge. He was buzzing. I already told this story on my last eX post that featured his phenomenal album as my 2022 AOTY, so I won’t tell it again, but long story short eXquire didn’t try to appease his record label and kept it 100. 

eXquire had already displayed tremendous talent on the microphone, but it always felt like his production didn’t meet his lyrical mastery. Then he dropped Kismet in 2013. 

Kismet is everything that eXquire is. Brilliant, introspective, aggressive, confident, insecure, brash, horny, and the list goes on. He dropped this when he was just 27 years old, so it was probably recorded when he was 25 or 26. That blows my mind, because dude sounds like he has lived 10 lives at this point. There is nobody that can express life as accurately as eX can, nobody.  

The production on here is excellent, and features an instrumental from Georgia Anne Muldrow (best female hip-hop producer in the world imo) on “Chains” that is one of my favorite instrumentals ever made. eX gives something for everyone here, there’s conscious raps, introspective ones, playalistic type raps, wise zen type stuff, etc. Can’t say enough about the quality, depth, and variety of rapping on here. There’s nothing like it that has ever been made.

I could write about this album endlessly, but I’ll keep it brief for the short attention spans out there. Available in limited edition on eXquire’s bandcamp, I happily purchased 2 copies of both the cd and cassette, as this arguably my favorite album of all-time, up there with Little Brother’s The Listening, Mobb Deep’s The Infamous, Mobb Deep’s Hell On Earth, Raekwon’s OB4CL, and MF DOOM’s MM..Food.

Favorite Tracks: All of them, though I don’t like the beat on Tomorrow’s Gone, but it’s still a dope track with Danny Brown, Flatbush Zombies, and Nacho Picasso as features on it. 

Buy this phenomenal piece of art if you’re smart. Didn’t mean for that to rhyme. Love y’all 💋

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About

The Author

I wrote this blog for a few reasons. One is because nobody in my circle of friends ever puts me on to music or things that are dope that I haven't heard about (step your game up friends!) as few people nerd out as hard as me on the dumb things I focus on. The other and main reason is because I am so tired of The NeedleDrop and Pitchfork, from the way Fantano talks about music, to the way that Pitchfork writes about it. Both cause me physical pain to read or watch, yet I for some reason occasionally check their review scores, because they are the only sites I know that do stay on top of music (to a degree), and they focus on genres that I'm not tapped into, so occasionally I find something good. Is it worth the pain? No. So let me save you the pain, by only sharing with you my favorites, and maybe you'll find a new favorite. Oh and I also love talking shit, so I'll do that too, but this blog is about showing love to great art. 

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