Steve 'Flash' Juon“I don’t think I’d be wrong to describe Top Ten as T’s best album to date.”
I’ve left out the name of the publicist who provided the quote above, but I had to marvel at the statement given I had never HEARD of Tachichi having an album before “Top Ten” arrived for a listen. In fact this might have wound up in the refuse bin were it not for the fact I had actually heard of the PRODUCERS on this album. I quickly scanned through the credits and saw reliable names like Sean One and Fresh Kils, so my ultimate conclusion was “I don’t think I’d be wrong to say I don’t know Tachichi from Adam, but it COULD at least be a good album. Let’s give it a shot.”
After poking around our extensive archive and finding Tachichi was on an URBNET Summer Sampler, I believe that him having multiple albums including “Top Ten” is at least a possibility — especially given that this one is only 36 minutes long. I acknowledge that it’s the new normal for albums to be far less than an hour in length but I also think this makes it easier to release a lot of things you can call “an album” in a short amount of time if you’re a prolific enough artist. (Moka Only comes to mind.) No specific song was listed as a potential single, but the DJ Moves produced “Everyday” with the very obvious Buddy Holly sample would’ve been a good choice. It’s more likely to be the similarly titled “Everything” though since a video exists.
“I got no beef with y’all
Like 90% of whatever those McDonald’s burgers are”
Okay so Tachichi has good to slightly above par punchlines and Sean One dropped a nice beat for this track, so either “Every” track would be a fine introduction to Tachichi. The album’s longest song is the Petey Punch produced posse-all-in product “Air Raid” featuring everyone from Ghettosocks to Kxng Wooz at 5:17. The majority of the CD’s songs clock in between two and four minutes, although the DJ Uncle Fester laced “Heads in the Sky” featuring the aforementioned Ghettosocks clocks in at 4:03. This album is so new I can’t find a clip of it to share with you, but Tachichi and Ghettosocks seem to collaborate so much they could do an album together, and most of them are as dope as the “I’m the Reason” video below.
Anyway Tachichi proudly proclaims himself to be “SipSet,” which is both a parody of The Diplomats and a reference to how much he likes to drink, as he seems to go everywhere in the “Everything” video with a red Solo cup (fill it up and have a party). Most Tachichi material is going to revolve around one of three things — punchlines, partying, or pursuing a rap star career. At first I thought “Atlantic Time” would be a storytelling track, but it winds up being a loose framing device for more punchlines like “What you spitting is cheese, you parmesan p***y.”
So can one accurately say this is “Tachichi’s best album yet” when one is experiencing a full album of his for the first time? No. Is it in any way a bad album though? Also no. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill Canadian underground rap album (Tachichi hails from Halifax) that comes from a scene where the word “rap” doesn’t mean “sing about codeine and Xanax while computer adjusting the vocals.” It’s a weird album for me in that nothing is technically wrong with it save for it being a little on the short side, and yet nothing is overly compelling either. If you’re looking for a well produced hip-hop release that’s not groundbreaking nor terrible, just comfortably in the middle and a slight bit of a throwback to the 1990’s or mid-2000’s, “Top Ten” will probably do.