See if you can keep up here: Rapper/producer the Alchemist is a Beverly Hills native who started out in a teenage major-label rap group with Scott Caan and who has somehow gone on to become one of the most reliable producers of dusty, bloodthirsty NYC crime-rap, crafting things like Prodigy's masterful Return of the Mac album. Rapper/producer Oh No is the younger brother of California backpack-rap overlord Madlib and a restless stoner-rap mind in his own right; he's fond of crazy undertakings like releasing an entire album where he only samples Greek and Middle Eastern psych-pop. Together, Alchemist and Oh No linked up last year to form a duo named Gangrene and to release the underrated Gutter Water album, a dizzy pileup of broken-sounding samples and willfully disgusting sound-clips. Rapper/producer Roc Marciano, meanwhile, is a 1990s-era Queens holdover and a veteran of Busta Rhymes' Flipmode Squad. Last year, he released the excellently dense and grimy self-produced solo album Marcberg, a welcome reminder that there's still life in the old Carhart-and-Tims Mobb Deep model.
On their own, these guys are all cranking out impressive work that happily exists within a long, proud backpack-rap lineage without ever really reaching toward larger audiences. And right now, both Gangrene and Roc Marci are labelmates; all three guys are on Decon Records. So really, it just makes sense to put all three together onto an EP, letting them all rap over each other's beats and seeing what happens. Greneberg-- its title an amalgam of Gangrene and Marcberg-- is a jumbled pileup of three talented artists who all exist on the same wavelength. It's a split EP, with Roc handling the first three tracks and Gangrene doing the next three. But it's also a collaboration, as all these guys flit in and out of each other's tracks, contributing beats or verses where needed.
"Don't give a fuck about the current direction of rap," says Alchemist on "Sewer Gravy"-- a bold statement from a guy who still works as Eminem's tour DJ. But the quote holds true, since these guys basically combine to form their own aesthetic universe. In this trio's vision of rap, choruses never need to show up, and beats sputter and ripple as often as they thump. The production on Greneberg sounds like what might happen if you threw late-1960s soul and psych into a malfunctioning blender; it's a beguiling fog of horn-stabs and organ sighs and guitar flutters. It sounds chaotic, and that's fine, since the three rappers sound most at home in chaos of their own making.
The EP works best when Roc Marciano is rapping; his threats pack a whole lot of lyrical inventiveness into a few terse, sneery lines. On "Jet Luggage": "Dress spiffy/ Finesse the Mac-11 out the Dickie/ Let off a dozen rounds into ya Crown Vicky." On "Momma Told Me": "My discography's godly/ Biters copy while I pull one out the crime rhyme glossary/ Before I pop your meat like Luca Brasi." Oh No and Alchemist can't compete with that, but they try, and it's fun to hear their attempts. (Alc on "New Shit": "Rockin' a jamboree, Barry Manilow piano man/ Freely perform compositions randomly.") And even when the verses don't click, it's worth it to hear all three producers push their vision of what rap is to its logical extreme. This is some hard, dusty, uncompromising underground rap, and there's always room for some of that.
