Houston rapper Maxo Kream’s intimately detailed story raps aren’t crafted to give listeners levity or an ounce of comfort. A majority of the tracks on Emekwanem Ogugua Biosah Jr.’s first studio album, Punken, unspool yarns about addiction and betrayals by close friends and shuffling between houses just to survive. On “Work,” Kream recalls his dad boosting cars and his brother cooking “with baking soda” on the kitchen stove. Family drama “Grannies” finds Kream’s cousin Pooh getting 42 years in prison for a murder charge. “Go,” a song anchored by a grimy music box melody and trap percussion, includes a line about having shooters “so young, they were born in the millennium” which gets more devastating the more you ponder it. Despite some of the superb record’s lush beats, this is almost all damn dour material.
I say “almost,” because clear-cut highlight “Roaches” takes a slightly different approach. Over a warm and unfussy trap beat, Kream fondly remembers stacking up paper in hopes of copping a new pair of Jordan XVII’s and takes it back to a time when he was “fuckin’ up computers usin’ Limewire and Bearshare.” (Sidenote: As a music-obsessive teenager when Limewire was at its zenith, I likely “fucked up” my family computer as well. Kream’s not alone in this.) He does kid shit like play fight to reenact Triple H and Ric Flair’s wrestling moves (though this nearly ends putting a young Kream in a wheelchair). He gets to breathe for a moment.
None of that is enough to insulate Kream from the ferocious realities of the near-present though. As “Roaches” continues, Kream’s basically torturing himself about not making it back quickly enough to his hometown when Hurricane Harvey hit. Each missed call from his mother feels like another pin prick to his psyche. “Woke up, 40 missed calls, she was callin’ all night, Said there’s no more food and lights and she been fightin’ for her life,” Kream puts it. It’s the album’s greatest bit of vulnerability and heart-rending proof that there’s a lot in our lives that we simply cannot control.
Punken is out now and well worth your time.
AllFreshSounds 