Happy Halloween. In honor of today, I wanted to make a post on one of the spookiest artists I know: the Ugly Mane himself.
Lil Ugly Mane (stylized LIL UGLY MANE, referred to as LUM from now on) is a noise artist. During any conversation about the Richmond, Virginia-based musician, I make sure to include that first. He makes noise, punk, metal, avant-garde, and most notably, hip-hop. He's a scrawny white guy named Travis Miller who produces under the name Shawn Kemp (or variations on it) and blew up in the post-first-wave-internet-rapper ooze that birthed Odd Future and, to a degree, Death Grips. He makes (well, made) gangsta rap with gimmicky pitch-shifted vocals with a fixation on death and drugs. But when you dig a little beneath the surface, things get unsettling really quickly.
After his mixtape "MISTA THUG ISOLATION" took the internet by storm (following a few demos and a preview mixtape titled "PLAYAZ CIRCLE" that got minimal attention), LUM began to play with the Bandcamp platform to create a persona that would become somewhat legendary. The jump in quality from the demos to "MISTA THUG ISOLATION" was notable: the vocals were produced very well in their low pitch, the beats were fantastic, and the lyrical content was disturbing and (while not subtle) intelligent in their delivery. It left people hungry for more. But LUM went dark, posting cryptic semi-albums and singles, then a triptych of instrumental mixtapes (the last one landing around two and a half hours long) that included everything from unused, dusty and gorgeous hip-hop beats to searing noise and black metal. Finally, he satisfied curiosity with his elegy to hip-hop and the LUM persona ("ON DOING AN EVIL DEED BLUES", a fantastic track) and then his dying gasp ("THE WEEPING WORM" followed by the swan song "Oblivion Access"), nailing the coffin shut.
"UNEVEN COMPROMISE" is a single/EP in the curious period following "MISTA THUG ISOLATION" and before his "Three Sided Tape" series. Its two parts (one intro cut, better heard than described, and a proper song made of multiple discernible sections) are the best thing LUM has ever put out. From the fantastic beats to meticulous songwriting to the jaw-dropping lyrics, LUM pushes horrorcore and other jokey genres into a place of uncomfortable reality. I'll be talking about the second part of "UNEVEN COMPROMISE" below, going into each section in length.
")))____◎◎◎◎█████", or as it's more commonly referred to, "Uneven Compromise", starts as a black metal song disguised as a grimy hip-hop track. Horror-movie bells chime as clicks and moans fade in from the background, and with a few artificial snare cracks, LUM's voice intones "Corrupted by the darkness / Now you fall into an endless sleep". And, fuck, it gets so much more fun. "Satanic prophecies / Christian hypocrisy"? "Flesh is the fabric that covers my robes / Blood is the matter that built up my throne"? "Same wolf from that folklore / Drinking blood right out of that goat horn"?! It's fucking Burzum! It's Bathory! It's Darkthrone! This shit is disturbing! As the beat fades out, pianos lightly plink to bring us out of the hellhole we've been thrust into.
A sampled quote discusses the implications of rap on our behavior, possibly alleviating some of the darkness heaped upon the first section. As the sample, layered in reverb, fades away, a boom-bap beat with flutes and jingling chimes recall 90s hip-hop while another sample discusses existentialist ideas in music and art. These two quotes and samples are thought-provoking in their placement in and over the song. This section ends by slowing down to a stop.
What follows is a well put-together sound collage, repeated over a growing, noisy drone. The four lines are all samples from other songs, describing the music industry as the reason we are disenfranchised with music itself. As everything grows to a crescendo, the collage cuts out.
The 90s aesthetic returns suddenly with beautiful piano chords and live drum beats cradling record scratches and a simple bass line. The lyrics fly in suddenly, telling a very personal story describing an encounter someone (maybe LUM, maybe an everyman) has with a friend dealing with addiction. From the writing to delivery, this section is heartbreaking. As we come to learn more about these characters, their plight becomes much more relatable until we feel connected to them. When the story comes to its shocking conclusion, LUM cuts us away to another, slightly more off-putting and worryingly anxious beat. With cut up vocal samples and tape hiss, this section drags along until it dies away. But there's still 26 seconds left.
Here, LUM lets us have it. All the bottled rage and intensity that can't come through with something as orchestrated as hip-hop is unleashed as a raging harsh noise wall. The song floors it until it cuts away, dropping us right back where we started. It's fucking genius: in a multi-tiered song, LUM forces us past our comfort zone and doesn't even let it end! We're mid-beatdown, and like the sadist he is, he won't finish us off.
"UNEVEN COMPROMISE" is great. No way around it. Jumping into LUM's entire mythos is tiring and more disappointing than not, but it is pretty fucking interesting. This is the apex, though, where he shakes the praise and familiarity of "MISTA THUG ISOLATION" (an album I admittedly don't like) and steps into something truly special.
Fucked up shit. Happy Halloween. Links below.
https://liluglymane.bandcamp.com/album/uneven-compromise ("UNEVEN COMPROMISE")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7-p1Wy3oLs ("Uneven Compromise - Live")
http://tinyurl.com/zkmprsf (MEGA)
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