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About halfway Mach’s hard lemonade, Mach-Hommy thanks his fans, then surprises himself: he prefers to call them “investors”. This word is both a reference to the unusual passion the Newark rapper inspires in his followers and the exorbitant prices he charges for his music and merchandise (the luxury vinyl version of lemonade sells for $ 444.44, the standard version a flight for half the price). But as time passes and Hommy’s catalog grows, the idea of fans as investors begins to evoke the image of a satisfied shareholder, lazily reaping the benefits of betting on it. -be-nomadic genius who seems engaged in quarter-to-quarter growth.
Mach-Hommy’s public persona –– near anonymity, wonderfully thorny interviews, his refusal to allow sites like Genius to sell ads for his transcribed lyrics –– and his penetrating, uncompromising music might suggest a more voluble. But Hommy has become prolific, even if you foresee gaps in the release schedule where albums unaffordable or unavailable on streaming platforms might otherwise remain. lemonade is the flawless continuation of a long chain of reliable Hommy records; it is also one of his strongest yet, captivating despite its brevity.
It would appear that there is an opportunity for Hommy to court some cross fame: lemonadeThe digital version of Tidal was exclusive to Tidal; he was pictured last fall during a reunion with JAY-Z, who obviously took inspiration from Hommy’s cadences for his verses on Jay Electronica A written testimony. But the closest that Hommy has just incorporated Jay into his latest work is a line on the album opening “SBTM” (“I saw the same shit happen to Shan”) which hints at a joke about Flight. 3 rappers biting another member of Juice Crew. And so when he raps, on that same song, “I Was Hidden / Now I’m Risen,” you understand that Hommy –– and some not-so-well-meaning advisers gathered around a conference table –– is the one who sets the rules. issues and the scope of its myth.
lemonade is mixed more cleanly than some of Hommy’s other records, but the sound design –– pleasantly jagged, sometimes muddy –– is still the unifying force of his music. Hommy is a collagist, someone who can link lines from a posthumous Biggie song and Baby Doc Duvalier’s reign in Haiti to MC Shan and the Atlanta rap group D4L (Fabo and the late Shawty Lo are both shouted in the opening verse of “Smoked Maldon” –– before Hommy compared himself to Steve Prefontaine). These scraps of matter taken from seemingly disparate worlds suggest such a keen observer that he sees the source code of life hidden from the rest of us; he realized the value of hiding in public long before the plague.
When raping, Hommy exerts remarkable control: at times his verses will seem to cross the beat, becoming more and more verbose, while slowly revealing an underlying rhythmic logic. (It makes things even more shocking – and rewarding – when Hommy opens his chest and blows out a verse, as he does on the nearest superb, “NJ Ultra.”) But it’s Hommy’s intermittent vocals that make his such dynamic albums: See his chorus on “Marshmallow Test”, where the way he sings “One for you… one, two for me” turns a famous experiment conducted on children into a cool capitalist taunt.
lemonadeThe climax of “Squeaky Hinge” is a moment of complete synthesis between Hommy’s technical virtuosity and musical instincts, his sly humor and his sense of violent currents in American cities. “The smell of death” erupts from apartments on gentrifying blocks near where the “hot mom” is “in the brothel with the Jonathan”. There’s even an evil bounce in the way he opens the trail: “What is pocket change? / What is house money? / What is house money? / What is house money? purse? / All I know is influence, fake. ” Mach-Hommy is interested in evoking, not in explaining, and has neither the patience nor the desire to update you.
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