To Listen: Chuck Strangers — Consumers Park (Instrumental)

Not sure who put me onto this genius right here (EDIT: SHOUT TO MY BOY RONIN!), though it seems oddly specific that this version of the albums is the instrumentals and not the one with actual verses. This record is a perfect 44 minutes of beats and soulful production that grant a laid back mist of concentration, a modern meditation on subway car head bumping and backpack commuting through city streets. While the rhymes that could be present might be vice tight, I don’t miss them in the slightest. I can feel a little bit of the same vibrations of the laid back skater anthem Kick Push from Lupe in here, if not in sound than in spirit. This feels like New York, maybe a little Chi-town, representing grimy streets composed of personality and grind.

There’s an obvious soul approach at play here. The reverbed guitars, the just-shy-of-funk motif. It reminds me a lot of a scene, super late at night, early on in the film Jackie Brown, when Samuel L. Jackson drives Chris Tucker around the block in his trunk to handle some business. It’s not the specific scene or the music of that scene that calls out to me, but maybe the personality of the movie melding with the personality of the music, and the way that the music is laid back, cool and calculated, the same way that the situation is handled by Jackson. It’s so composed. This sounds like big, old expensive cars that can only be described as classic, rolling down city streets in summer. Fire hydrants busted open with lush spouts of water gushing out, children celebrating their freedoms in a hydrocosm. This feels like urban rejoice.

There’s a positivity in the veins of this one, pumping out from the valves and muscles of the core of this record is a glowing enjoyment of the music at play. Bass lines shine. Samples luminesce. Even towards the end of the record, once you’ve explored an entire subspecies of this hip-hop gem, there’s a track (No Dice), that wants you to escape your body. It lifts you up out of your limbs, your thorax, your torso, and shapes you into a 4/4 dream-being, rolling you out and forcing you to become something different, something compliant. Utter trust.

The record ends abruptly. Without warning. But it’s almost better off. It takes you to places completely free from your own thought process. You can get lost in the copacetic labyrinth of this one for hours at a time. HIGHLY recommended. Take the journey on the instrumental right now. Once you get acclimated, check out the one with the rhymes as well. Both ways, you’ll be introduced to one of your new favorite hip hop records.

Listen to the instrumentals here. (Click for Spotify)
Then drop the verses in. (Click for Spotify)