Cakes Da Killa – Hedonism

Nothing spongy about wired, club-demolishing hip-hop provocateur...

Not shy on sexual expression, but hot on show-n-prove too (“able to turn a fitted to a halo”), those who follow New Jersey’s Cakes Da Killa won’t be expecting him to apply the brakes after 2013’s ‘The Eulogy’. Ghetto fabulousness loaded with danger, and uninhibited, no matter if shit gets ugly, ‘Hedonism’ rushes the spot as a whirlwind force of nature both pro- and anti-hipster.

Hip-house and b-more hyperactivity declares the club open for anything and everything, if you hadn’t gathered from the album title. ‘Keep It Goin’ packs the floor until it becomes a health & safety issue, encapsulating an immediate rush of loud whip-crack beats and ear-twisting twizzles on top that covers ‘Been Dat Did That’ and ‘Gon Blow’ featuring hip-house empress Rye Rye. If it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, whether through sweat levels or carnal aggression, move along. Weirdly for a club album though, the music has a vibe of retaliation, despite encouraging the proximity of sharpened elbows for the majority of its 32 minutes.

With machine gun rhymes sprayed like winner’s champagne from the podium and occasionally revisited to ramp up momentum, even CDK’s slow jams drip with intensity (‘Frostin’’). The explicit ruling the suggestive, ‘Tru Luv’ also shows the tiniest chink of love-over-lust vulnerability, which is saying something for an album that’s more terrordome than pleasuredome, and where love is a battlefield rather than a playground.

‘Talkin Greezy’ finds a beast mode within (“I drop bombs that rip necks from craniums/my firearms remove limbs from shady ones”), and ‘New Phone’ is at home on trap that gets chopped & screwed, a nice contrast when the sass of rhymes that start to come through ride 808s like a spacehopper. ‘Revelations’ is a slick, post-club stride of pride, just to give Cakes that extra edge with no loss of his DGAF invincibility. Even if ‘Hedonism’ gets engulfed by the year’s hip-hop competition, Cakes encourages you to grab a slice.

7/10

Words: Matt Oliver

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