Steve 'Flash' JuonUnlike a lot of the random artists whose instrumental albums I choose to sample, Drip-133 has their own website and it looks like a professional and polished affair. Of course if this website is still here in a decade and that link is broken don’t blame me, just know that I’m speaking to you from a time where most independent artists left it to Bandcamp and social media to form their online presence. It impressed me even though it’s completely irrelevant to whatever kind of music Drip is making.
It might be even more impressive when you consider I’m checking out “Takeafter” (which IS available on Bandcamp) almost a decade after it came out. There are a couple of guest rappers on Drip’s beats, which is not typical for these type of albums either, but to be honest they are such a minimal part of the presentation I’m not doing a rating for lyrics here. That’s to Drip’s benefit because if I’m “Being Honest” I’d rather not hear from Bones beyond one song. He delivers bars with so little passion that I would have rather had an instrumental by itself than his performance.
“Mint Cycle” claims to feature someone named Hnrk but given I hear no rapper or singer I can only surmise they contributed to the production. Maybe they played the keyboards or clacked drumsticks together for those incredibly piercing percussive sounds. That’s not a negative either way. In fact I’d rather hear a sharp CLACK of a stick than no kind of beat at all. Chalk that up to my failed aspirations as a drummer in my youth.
The overall mood of “Takeafter” is a young producer with some good ideas searching for a direction to go in with their career. Watch me say that only to find out Drip-133 is older than me. In any case while there’s a lot of promise here I’d say that I can only truly know if Drip-133 achieved it by listening to some of their most recent work. This was either a good start or a flash in the pan but above all else I sincerely hope future releases don’t feature Bones, because I never need to hear that rapper again.