Artist: Obijuan x Yungmorpheus

Album: Slang Casino

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Background

2022 has been an impressive year for Nassau-located rapper Obijuan. Early in the year he released Helviti with long-time collaborator, dylantheinfamous, the third instalment of the ‘Holy Trilogy’ from the emcee/producer pairing. Later in the year saw a slew of projects all released in quick succession. In September alone Obi released Mystery Merxhant with Giallo Point, Methuselah with Poi$on 陽, and Blaxk Tuesday, a short concept album centred around the important date in Bahamian political history. In October he released Xyberphunk: 2033, the first self-produced project in his discography, and then in November he released Guanahani, a 21-track odyssey, again over more dylantheinfamous production. But, in the midst of this year of many projects, Obijuan released his truly best work, Slang Casino.

Slang Casino is the collaborative pairing of Obijuan’s raps and the production of Yungmorpheus, two staples in the underground Renaissance who have been making a name for themselves over the past years. This project sees the two finally meeting for an entire album, a project celebrating the Bahamian and Jamaican cultures which each artist hails from, with pulsing dub beats, reggae rhythms, and lyrics and interludes centred around the British colonies of the West Indies, and their place in both modern music and the modern world. This postcolonial vision lives throughout the project, as both rapper and producer aim to delve into their respective cultures and challenge any dominating or controlling of the islands they call home. As it’s title indicates, the album is centred around “slang”, and is laced with a whole lot of it, as any great rap record should be. For Obijuan, slang drives the album, it’s tracks are slang, his lyrics are slang, and this abundance of a language unique to Obi and his culture opens up into the unique and vivid experience of Slang Casino.

Review

The album opens with the intro ‘FLASHYCOIN’, a setting of the scene which sees the listener placed “A bit southeast of Florida, sprawl the low-lying islands of the Bahamas…”, as an old recording sees an American voice describing the islands as “one of Britain’s self-governing colonies”. Already, the descriptor ‘colony’ has been used, setting up the rest of the record to answer this description of the Bahamas and challenge the colonialism which was forced upon it.

This is followed by a sudden break into the funk instrumental of the title track, ‘SLANGCASINO’, where an old James Brown loop of guitars moves the record into its first groove, and a Ghostface Killah vocal sample stabs in the background. Amongst this soundscape, Obijuan’s verse opens, a slew of the slang which defines this record; “Slang casino, / slam the gambino, / stanzas free yo” or “hands twist dope, / smoking on Thor’s hammer”. The rapper even references the legendary lines of Ghost Deini with “Juan did this, Juan did that, Juan sold wax”, where he mimics his critics and asserts the music he sells. This “slangtastic” slew continues, nearly incomprehensible at times, but full of meaning as Obijuan fully embraces a language of his own.

The proceeding track ‘WISEONE’ sees Morph flipping a soul sample, with brief chops of vocal and soulful chords atop which Obijuan raps. The rapper opens by naming himself, “Bush Doctor, Blunt Builder, / Obeah-Man”, two nicknames once again stooped in slang, as he describes how he pushes “tracks like wet dope” in a comparison of song releases to drug sales. The track then concludes with Obijuan proclaiming himself “the wise one” for how he sells his music through a wisdom in hustling.

Following this is ‘SPLIFFHOLDER’, where a first taste of dubby bass and reggaesque guitar lines come into the album courtesy of Morpheus on the boards. In fact, Yungmorpheus opens this track with a verse of his own, with raps about smoking and a reference to “languid.oceans”, another collaborative pairing between Obijuan and looms, who both fill out the rest of the track. looms’ verse is second in the ordering, where his British accent distinguishes him from the American guests who fill the rest of the album’s roster. The final verse is then Obijuan himself, describing himself as an “Afro-Caribbean-Scandinavian-pagan prince”, a convoluted title which emphasises the international flaneur which the rapper appears to be, connected to many cultures and many nations.

This run of songs is followed by the short interlude, ‘JIVETONGUE’. In it, an interviewer asks their interviewee to explain a variety of slang terms. The speaker goes on to explain the meaning of a “barbecue”, a “chirp” and finally a “lily-white” which is simply answered with “you are a lily-white” amidst laughs from the audience.

Following this interlude ‘HEATED HANDS’, a relaxed track with Morph’s beat of a deep bass and shimmering piano for a more low-key groove. Obijuan comes in with a flow just as relaxed, rapping about the mysterious nature of his music (“slang secret slang / sacred video”) and the track’s central metaphor of “heated hands beat the frozen drum”, where the “cold life” the rapper finds himself in is subject to the allegorical heat of hands on the drum, which can be interpreted as the artist creating music. In this imagery, the music is a salvation from the cold, a place of security and warmth in an otherwise cold world.

The next track ‘SEVENSUMMITS’ then opens, as the muted instrumental slowly fades in, before the listener is met with a looped slap bass groove, and every loop ending with a short stab of horns. On this track Obijuan raps opens with an ominous scene of how he writes his raps (“pen strokes malevolent and slow”), before emphasising himself as an international force, confined to no nation. He explains this through the image of himself atop “seven summits, north face cosy”, where the rapper is envisioned on top of the world in seven distinct places, all with his cosy north face jacket, which he goes on to describe as “gore-tex polo black and yellow”. The track then ends as the loop of slap bass finally breaks into a wailing synth and the beat ends.

Following this is ‘RUMRUNNER’, maybe the darkest sounding track on the album in comparison to the grooving and triumphant funk of the rest of the record’s production, as Yungmorpheus lays a beat of solemn sounding guitar in a drumless loop. Obijuan opens with a description of the Bahamas as a “land of the honey and milk, money and krill”, flipping the old idiom which describes a an idyllic paradise, and showing its duality in the money motivated exploitation on the British colony. The Bahamas may appear a paradise to holiday goers and the wealthy, but they is in fact a nation facing the consequences of colonialism just like any other struggling nation. The themes of Obijuan’s verse are just as somber as the beat, as he muses on the struggles of his home country in the 2020s, such as the pandemic and rising gas prices. One of Obi’s most poignant lines in the song is “cold winters from the harshest summers, / slang talk in the slums with some mossberg pumpers”, where poverty, slang, and violence all intertwine. Overall, the darkest moment on the album is its most political, as colonialism and struggle go hand in hand – and the listener is presented a much darker vision of the Bahamas.

The following song ‘LOSTLAND’ opens on tropical reggae production, channeling a vision of the Bahamas and its soundscape. Obi quickly uses some Bahamian Creole in the phrase “Obeah folklore”, using the word meaning a creolised magic prevalent in many post-colony communities in the Caribbean (and also where his ‘Obeah Man’ moniker emerges from). He continues rapping about “Lost lands fly as banners in the wind”, another reference which puts Caribbean nationhood centre stage in the song, envisioning both a lostness and a freeness to the islands metonymically represented by their flags in the wind.

‘SNAKES N LADDERS’ then continues the album, where Obi recounts his international women over a loop of a dub bass which drives the track. He starts at home, with “my Nassau shorty smoke loosies”, before moving to the mother nation of the colony stating “my British shorty like fish and chips cooked with batter”, as well as how “my Icelandic shorty hate the snow”, a reference to his Scandinavian heritage from his grandmother. The focus on these nameless women is the perfect excuse to suggest the rapper’s international presence and persona. Obijuan’s identity is not singular (Bahamian) or a dualism (Bahamian and British) but completely multifaceted, encapsulated in the song’s comedic focus of his girls all over the world. Then, proceeding this song, is ‘TREASURE BEACH’, an interlude of horns which brings to narrative back to his Caribbean roots and describes Bahamian cultural practises such as the workings of “the goat race”.

Proceeding this is the track ‘SLANGPIRATE’, where Yungmorpheus crafts a slow, hazy instrumental of swirling guitar. Obi’s stutteringly quick flow enters atop this, proclaiming himself “Slang general”, a well-earned title demonstrated in the pourings of verbal intricacies which have laced the album so far. He continues this self-description with “smell like I’m selling dope”, harshly uttered and confrontational, before the song is over at a minute and a half.

The track ‘STARSKI’ then follows this, where a familiar flipped James Brown sample of mellow horns and a guitar hit are laced out by Morph for Rahieme Supreme and Obijuan. Rahieme raps first, describing “ancestors’ energy / bloodlines one of a kind / Caribbean islands all just follow”, where internal rhymes and assonance seemingly drive the power of his own island identity. As soon as his verse finishes, Obi is quick to jump in right on top, rapping about “West Indian bass drums / same punch strike your lip / the spliff make your face numb”, where the lyrical features of Rahieme’s verse continue, with assonance and internals setting the musical scene. The horns then warble into the song’s close.

The appropriately titled ‘SUPASLANG’ commits to the album’s concept as a slang-filled linguistic odyssey. The production is ballad-like, with a slow, emotionally charged piano line and organ chords behind it. Obi’s supa-slang is then laced into the song; “kush and cones”, “flipping turtles”, “seaweed / rice cover raw flesh”, where verbal choices verbally code the narrative. Obi describes this practise perfectly as to “talk in tongues / make the slang rhyme”, where the aim of this entire project is the artistic practise of making slang rhyme and the meanings which emerge from that.

One heights of the album’s production is ‘BANANALEAF’, where curtesy of Yungmorpheus’ attention to the dub sound, a dub bass line, echoing vocals and wah wah guitar reverberate throughout the two minute runtime, channeling the otherworldly, ghostly feel of figures like King Tubby or The Upsetters. A potent image comes in the track’s beginning, just the three words “sugar cane slums” evoke a scene of island deprivation where sweetness and poverty collide. Another potent moment comes in the rapper’s reference to his craft in “pen heavy / double-edged great-sword”, where the power of the pen is evoked in a sword-like might of writing prowess, akin to the likes of the Wu-Tang Clan, who often associated writing with swordplay. He also references the song’s title in what sounds like “robber in the banana leaf”, a surreal image of the Caribbean plant becoming complicit in crime. Then the Tubby-esque soundscape fades away into ‘OLD CITY’, another interlude describing the architecture of the “old city” of Nassau.

‘LIMBO’, the most menacing sounding track on the album, making a sharp break from the reggae funk of the run which proceeds it. An ominous, glitchy sample plays over boom bap drums, and Obi takes the first run at rapping, with references ranging from “cans of Guinness” to “Salvador Dali” or how the rapper “quotes Jigga”. Obi also vents against resellers of his records, going as far to suggest if he “find it on eBay / I buy my orders back” condemning the consumption of his work purely for monetary gain and no enjoyment, as well as the wider culture of purchasing hip hop records to flip them and make a profit that the artist never sees. His verse is following by Bisk, whose raspy British accent accentuates the menacing nature of an already ominous production. Standout lines from this verse include: “couldn’t fit the baly on my big head” and “heat the cabbage on the lantern / whilst they toss the salad”. The song then slows and pitches down before ending.

Included only on the vinyl edition of the album, ‘STOLEN FRUIT’ is a short, crackling, dubby track which serves as the album’s bonus penultimate moment. Over the crackling funk Obijuan raps “Know your roots […] belly swollen, stolen fruits” recounting the satisfaction of stealing to stave off hunger. He makes another Mach-Hommy reference with “Flip you like a frown”, flipping the Dump Gawd’s own affinity for flipping. The bonus dub then fades out into a vinyl crackle hum.

The first single and final culmination of the album is ‘GUAPANESE’, a play-on-words combining the notions of language and money into the description of Obi and Morph’s slang as its own linguistic tongue. The soundscape of the entire project truly culminates in the dubby sounds of deep bass, echoing guitar and a voice beneath that fray singing “I’m hanging on to my sanity…”. Obijuan himself is the first atop this dub, rapping “Pour the oolong / need a moulin / fold the tape like a futon”, where the rhymes of his slang drive the verse and decides where his tongue will be taken, as the slang so decisively decides all on this album. This rhyme scheme soon meets a moment in a narrative, “speak secret tongues / met the grim reaper once” as a story of secret slang and coming close to death develops before being lost to the stream-of-slang once again. This stream is not absent minded or messy, it is highly conscious and decisive in how to approach the art of rapping. Yungmorpheus leaps right onto where Obi finishes, rapping “split the gamma rays / shit different now the grammar pays”, in a similarly stream-of-slang approach where the ‘grammar’ of rapping is at the forefront of an emcee’s style. This stream continues; “twist the grab a leaf / only signing for a lot of cheese / spit the guapanese”, where weed, money and raps are all slangified in the language of the song’s title. The dub then continues to beat into the culminating moments of the project.

Overall, this album is an ode to slang and the cultures it emerges from. A slang-centred project which sees both Obijuan and Yungmorpheus reach their creative peak. The themes are consistent, the beats stick to dub soundscape at the album’s core, and Obi’s raps are the best he has ever written. The project is linguistically diverse with Bahamian Creole and Obi’s own language repertoire at the forefront of the emerging emcee’s singular style. The project delivers on its promised title; the listener wins big at the casino every time with this album as slang pours out from the machines time and time again. Anyone who is interested in the linguistic complexity of rap music, and how new terms and phrases greet listeners of hip hop at such a rapid rate, should definitely listen to Obijuan and Yungmorpheus’ Slang Casino.

Questions

Where does this rank for you in Obijuan’s extensive discography? Do you agree to the extent this is a stylistic shift from a lot of the current underground sound? How well does this album delve into its chosen subject of ‘slang’?