Artist: Mach-Hommy

Album: #RICHAXXHAITIAN

Release Date: May 17, 2024

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Artist Background by /u/Kelterz

Over the last ten years, Mach-Hommy has manifested himself as one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic rappers. In the scarce amount of interviews the Haitian-American rapper has given during that time, he has unveiled a couple of things about his childhood upbringing – like how he grew up in Newark, and spent some of his early years in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince – but aside from that, the main thing that defines Mach-Hommy’s image is elusiveness. Whether it’s his iconic look, in which he covers his face with a Haitian flag bandana, the fact that he’s been able to keep his real name a secret for all this time, or even his near-complete digital anonymity; there’s always a sense of mystery surrounding his persona.

While Mach-Hommy started out recording music young, at the age of 13, he decided to stop rapping at a certain point, because of how ‘unhealthy the process’ of recording became to him, and he picked up filmmaking instead. However, after bringing some new camera equipment with him on a multi-day trip to Buffalo, Conway, and a couple of other Griselda affiliates motivated him to start rapping again, which led to him doing a feature for Conway’s Beloved and becoming a Griselda member himself.

Mach first garnered attention when he released his 2016 album HBO (Haitian Body Odor) on Griselda. The thing that stood out the most, aside from the quality of his music, was his unconventional release method: he only pressed 187 copies of the record and sold them for $300. While Mach would leave Griselda shortly after the release of HBO, this method of releasing music would be a recurring theme in his career, with a lot of his music never ending up on streaming services, and instead being sold for very high prices on his website and on services like Bandcamp.

Since releasing HBO (Haitian Body Odor), Mach-Hommy has released an absolutely staggering amount of work, with a lot of releases, like 2017’s The G.A.T… and 2021’s Pray for Haiti, becoming underground classics. #RICHAXXHAITIAN, his fourteenth solo studio album, is intended to be the closer of a ‘tetralogy’ (a series of four Haiti-themed albums, comprised of HBO (Haitian Body Odor), Pray for Haiti and Balens Cho (Hot Candles)). A private listening experience for the album was held on June 15, 2023, with tickets costing $77.77, while another release party on February 24, 2024 had tickets that were $1,111.11.

#RICHAXXHAITIAN was self-released by Mach-Hommy, and features a wide array of guest appearances, with Black Thought, 03 Greedo, Roc Marciano, Your Old Droog, Kaytranada and many more artists appearing throughout the record. Production duties were handled by Conductor Willians, Quelle Christ, Elijah Hooks, SadhuGold, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Sam Gendel, Kaytranada, Fortes, and Messiah Musik. On the 6th of May, Mach-Hommy released lead single #RICHAXXHAITIAN, featuring Kaytranada and 03 Greedo, before releasing the album a day before Haitian Flag Day, on May 17th. On May 23rd, the record was removed from Spotify and Youtube, prompting Mach to upload a video to his Youtube channel in which he criticized their mismanagement; a short while later, the album was back on streaming services.

Album Review by /u/Kelterz

Mach is obviously one of the best lyricists of the past decade, and while the album is peppered with complex lyrics and unrivalled thematic depth, it’s been a known fact that Mach doesn’t like it when his lyrics get posted online, with him famously getting his Genius lyrics taken down after claiming copyright protection on his words. As such, I will review the album while focusing on the overarching themes of his music without outright posting lyrics of the album.

The record opens with (…), which immediately shows how unique Mach-Hommy’s music is. The instrumental is more reminiscent of ambient music than anything remotely adjacent to the hip hop sphere; on the song, reverb-drenched guitar, organs and a flute work in unison to create a perfect atmosphere for Mach-Hommy spitting a verse in Haitian Creole.

Mach rarely misses with his records, but if there’s one critique of him that I have thought about for a while, it’s that I think he kind of pigeonholed himself into a certain type of underground sound and vibe; while his albums have always been great, I feel like they have lacked the thematically expansive quality his earlier records had, with – in my opinion – 2017’s The G.A.T… being his truly conceptually dense record.

Until now, of course, because #RICHAXXHAITIAN absolutely nails the symbolism, concepts and atmosphere it’s aiming for. The second song, ANTONOMASIA, sees Mach sparring with Roc Marciano, with both laying down some rapid-fire verses over a chugging, hazy beat, while POLITickle sees him return to a more proggy, psychedelic soundscape. Mach’s music is always inherently political, but this is the first explicitly political song on the record with English lyrics; he describes how Israel drops white phosphorus on civilians in Gaza, while he laments in the song’s chorus that the International Monetary Fund is a ‘monkey on his back, and a rather heavy one’.

SONJE has a more percussive beat than any of the songs that came before it, and Mach spazzes the hell out over the beat, laying down some hard hitting verses in which he even channels Fela Kuti, while PADON, with its uncanny synthesizers, feels like another sparring match with Tha God Fahim. EMPTY SPACES is easily one of the best beats on the album; it starts with some ritualistic chanting and switches in this hard-to-grasp beat that sounds like it’s built around a reversed sample. Mach lays down a hard verse: he talks about how the ‘poor attitude bitches give him is biblical’, he describes how he’s in a lane of his own and talks about how investors make money by going to zotanica.com, his website. The Your Old Droog feature, however, proves to be one of very few low points on this album – I’ve been a big fan of his music for years, but I have no idea why he felt the need to say “Motherfuckers be havin’ that dog in ‘em but it’s a poodle / Motherfucker’s be havin’ that dog in ‘em but it’s another dog rapin’ ‘em / On two legs, homo sapien”, and why Mach even greenlit that shit. Whatever.

SUR LE PONT d’AVIGNON (Reparation #1) gets right back on track though, and Mach easily switches between French, English and Arabic lyrics, in which he references the Plagues of Egypt, over a beat that feels both lethargic and upbeat. XEROX CLAT functions as an interlude: it depicts a conversation between Mach and Haitian Jack, where they discuss revolutionary leftist ideology. Mach says that cultural change is only possible by emulating Pol Pot’s Year Zero ideology – in which all culture and traditions within a society should be destroyed or discarded to create a new revolutionary culture from scratch – explains how the masses are being manipulated by a couple of businessmen with hypercapitalistic aims, and laments how black people are being persuaded into cannibalism on a mass scale, referencing black-on-black violence and gang culture.

GORGON ZOE LAN is only a minute long, and Mach lays down some hard-hitting bars about his excellence over a beat that channels ‘70s progressive music. THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW continues with the abstract, proggy instrumentation, and the combination between Mach’s poignant, straight-to-the-point rapping with the accordion sample in the background makes for an incredible song. COPY COLD is a collaboration between Mach and one of my favourite rappers of all time, Black Thought, and the result is downright incredible. As opposed to the muddy soundscapes that feel like they’re drenched in reverb that make up most of #RICHAXXHAITIAN’s runtime, COPY COLD feels like a beat that could’ve been on The Roots’ undun, with the percussion taking the spotlight in the beat, and Mach low key emulating a Roots-like flow on the first verse. Emotionally, this is one of the most hard-hitting songs on the album, with Black Thought dropping one of the best verses of the year in which he references a whole array of topics that only he could mention on a song; he seamlessly goes from Leninggrad and former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to ‘making sure that Allah is with us’ because ‘the only way to survive is God willin’. Right after, he delves deep into his psyche to talk about how “Half-decomposed bodies is found inside buildings / When that odd feeling blow in the wind like Bob Dylan / Saw my moms giving it to Philly when it didn’t deserve her / The loss of my personal catalytic convertor / Had me off, and admittedly parasitic”.The song ends with a news item that talks about how “Haiti has been bad for years” but how there’s now “no elected controlling authority at all”.

#RICHAXXHAITIAN, the title track, is a bit of an odd duck on the album, with Kaytranada’s trademark bouncy hip house production and an unexpectedly poppy 03 Greedo verse, but it’s still a memorably song and a really good song to warm people up to the idea of listening to Mach-Hommy. LON LON sees Mach return to his proggy psychedelia. He manifests who he is as a rapper (“I’m not your token n**** boy rapper, I’m a charmin’ ass composer), references how ‘crackers waste his time’ and rants about the lack of discipline others have. SAME 24 almost sounds like a Lupe beat, with a gorgeous piano chord progression and soft, choir-like vocals in the background, while GUGGENHEIM JEUNE sees him critiquing others. The album ends on a very strong note with HOLY ____: over one of Conductor Williams’ finest beats, he proudly raps about how he has been able to keep his sanity in a dark, twisted world. He notes that “this is the kind of place where open cases keeps their mom away” and how it’s “just an observation from the Haitian teaching all the Yanks”, and talks about people should listen to his music instead of drugs for some soul searching (“Ketamine, amphetamine, you ain’t searching / Search me, you might find a thing, spring working”). The song ends in soulful, gospel-like imagery, wrapping up the album on a euphoric, hopeful note.

Final Thoughts

#RICHAXXHAITIAN is undoubtedly one of the most dense and complex hip hop records of the year. With 17 songs across a 47-minute runtime, there’s a lot to take in here, and whether it’s the soundscapes, the lyrics or the imagery: repeated listens are a requirement to even remotely grasping the record. Those that are willing to put in the effort, however, are rewarded by one of the finest records in the last decade. Not only is #RICHAXXHAITIAN Mach’s finest and most conceptual work since The G.A.T…, it’s also a phenomenal example of hip hop as an art form: it’s completely singular, it truly pushes hip hop into an avant-garde space, it’s self-expressive, and above all, consistently conscious of the fact that everything in life is political – which, as a result, leads to an album that isn’t afraid to talk about imperialism and global injustices, making this a very political album. Mach really channels the polyglot in him on #RICHAXXHAITIAN, using Creole, English, Arabic and other languages, all while seamlessly switching between singing and rapping. Above all, #RICHAXXHAITIAN feels like a victory lap, a magnum opus that truly encompasses everything Mach-Hommy is known for and should be championed for in the scene; if it wasn’t obvious before, it should be at this point – Mach truly is one of the greatest underground rappers of all time.

Discussion points

How does the album stack up against Pray for Haiti for you? Do you think it compares in scope or sound, or do you see this as a new direction? What do you think of the title track within the context of the record itself? What’s your favourite feature on the record? Kind of a meta question, but: what’s your take on Mach-Hommy ‘protecting’ his lyrics and making sure they don’t end up on Genius?