God bless Hip-Hop and God bless Filipinos.
Cousin MC’s Anthony Bobadilla & Justin Nacua released an album that paints a mural featuring decades of influences.
INQ. short for inquisitive minds, created an album injected full of 90’s hip-hop tablature but following the contemporary practices of sample-based beat making (insert Conductor tag).
Though being heavily inspired, the duo reposition themselves from the predecessors. Art of Light has no deep loyalty to a certain “coastal sound”; it can be seen as something rooted within Sydney. Each track is a dedication to the MPC, SP-404, and crate digging producers of that hip-hop era. You can almost hear the discoloured thuds of the drum pads by the end of the mixtape from the amount of samples spewed into your ears.
Vinyl crackled soul samples laced with twinkling chimes and compressed percussion are a love letter to a genre that soundtracked the duo’s lived experience. The track Blue Hour is an example of that classic recipe with a few new added ingredients. Hovering over the chopped samples is the duo’s signature buttery flow intersecting with ad-libbed vocal thrills and gliding melodies that elevate the listener to the roof of their vinyl infested listening room.
The track Time / Less with its reverberated drum samples and chopped synths is reminiscent of a rap group that has something to do with a tribe and a quest? A definite sentiment that a lot of people would agree is that a double take would certainly be present if played in public.
Outside-In is splattered with east-coast G-funk propaganda. The punchy one liner bars that the cousins relay will quantise the head-bops of anyone within a listening vicinity.
The Duo does grab many different influences to form this mixtape but they regurgitate these influences and reframe it that only someone from Sydney or so-called Australia can do. An explicit truth is this mixtape is something that UMI would say. (For all the nettspenders this is a yasiin bey song).
Words by Rafael Enriquez