(XL Recordings)
His Playboi Carti collabs may have dragged Tom Heyes out of the underground, but this bracing debut remains far from the mainstream, full of garbled barks and walls of noise
On the second track on his debut album, Tom Heyes accuses lesser artists of copying him. “What the fuck you even take me for?” he barks on Northside Needs Me, over a grinding, distorted bassline that comes punctuated with stammering, rave-y vocal samples. “Too much noise shit, replicating what I played before.”
Of course, charging that others are merely imitating what you did previously is a venerable rap tradition: the track that gave said practice its longstanding name, Bite’n My Stylee by Original Concept, is now 40 years old. Perhaps it’s true that others have been copying the approach that Heyes has minted under the alias of Blackhaine, but if so, it seems faintly remarkable, because his approach is so determinedly unique.
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