album review: 'for my mama and anyone who look like her' by mckinley dixon

I don’t think people talk about ‘influence’ all that well.

Because it’s not clear-cut, and it becomes a messy conversation very fast. On the one hand you get the people who put forward that since a certain act defined or influenced a scene they must be held in top regard above everyone in it - after all, if it wasn’t for them, the scene wouldn’t exist! But influence doesn’t always translate to success, critical or commercial, and vice versa - there are albums that get tons of critical acclaim or sell very well, but they don’t wind up being influential on the scene because they’re difficult to recreate, or they don’t have staying power in the popular consciousness, or trends change too fast and a great moment gets forgotten.

What I’m saying is that jazz rap tends to get screwed in this department, and at this point we have decades of evidence to support it. You can go back to Digible Planets and the Native Tongues collective who were building groundswell in the late 80s and early 90s… and gangsta rap rolled through instead. For a more recent example, when Kendrick Lamar put out To Pimp A Butterfly, it was the talk of 2015… but then trap cemented its hold on all hip-hop and the moment because just that, a moment, even for Kendrick. And this was frustrating, because as a rule - and I include myself in that category - critics tend to like the jazzier, more thoughtful side of hip-hop, it calls back to a potent sonic legacy where there so many unique compositional avenues to still be tapped. But again, I get why it’s not as popular - tougher to rap over, and if you want the production to sound organic and you get live instrumentation… well, that impacts your label and their budgeting.

But now I’d like to introduce McKinley Dixon, an artist out of Virginia who has been active the past five or so years not just as a great, forward-thinking rapper and poet - he was getting cosigns by underground veterans very quickly - but also gradually expanding his sound to pick up more jazz timbres. But now he got signed to Spacebomb - the label I most knew for Bedouine, Natalie Prass, and Laura Veirs - and given the critical buzz in certain circles was off the charts for this album, I really wanted to delve into it in detail… albeit way later than I’d prefer. So what did we get?

…okay, full disclosure here: I wanted to cover this a month ago. I actually first found McKinley Dixon on Bandcamp, I discovered the critical acclaim by accident after I had already listened to the album three or four times, and it took me a while to dig up the lyrics properly. But I wanted to cover it in a solo review because, no joke, this is some of the best music I’ve heard all year, not just in hip-hop. It’s definitely head-and-shoulders above the majority of rap I’ve heard, but McKinley Dixon has been conscious to avoid being pigeonholed in that genre and I’d argue this album doesn’t fit cleanly into it: not just dabbling in soul and R&B, but also jazz - and I’m not talking the smooth and easy stuff! It’s an album that floored me on first listen, and every chance I got I went back for more - and yeah, I’m late to covering it, but outside of that niche group of critics this has been slept on and I want to fix that.

First off, McKinley Dixon might be one of the most impressive rappers purely on flow I have heard in years. The fact that the instrumentals lean towards jazz make you think of Kendrick as a parallel, but the way he bends and rolls around words and inflections, sounding ever so slightly off-kilter but always in control reminds me more of an Andre 3000, maybe with some traces of Quelle Chris or Acid Rap-era Chance The Rapper in his vocal timbre and cadence. But say what you will about them, a lot of their production had a bit more stability and consistent groove, and on a few tracks on this album he does get it… but then you get songs like ‘make a poet Black’ and finding a pocket in that production would be difficult for the best rappers; McKinley Dixon will find it multiple times and then change it up with an elasticity that feels uncannily natural. But he’s not just a pure spitter either who’ll rattle off bar after bar - he’s more free-flowing, borderline conversational where there’s a lot of wry, understated charm and puts me more in mind of Noname when she flows offbeat or into odd territory. Or let me put it like this: I’ve heard enough rap where today, it requires something special for me to be a little starstruck on flow alone, and McKinley Dixon got there with ease - and what’s even more thrilling is that he doesn’t sacrifice song structure to do it! Unlike so many rappers relying on pure wordplay who can’t assemble a coherent song - and given McKinley Dixon is rapping over some complex and freewheeling innstrumentals, he could have the excuse not to - but he has hooks and can structure a crescendo and melodic flow, and that’s not counting songs like ‘protective styles’ which goes for more R&B where he’ll sing and he sounds solid!

And this leads to the production, and where McKinley Dixon is able to showcase a versatility you might not expect… because while a lot of the compositional roots of this album are in jazz and he has live horns, bass, guitar, harp, and drums across this album which leads to a colour and variety in the sound that helps soften the blow of so many tight and tangled flows, it’s not all that. You get songs like ‘Swangin’ which has a fat, synth-inflected southern bounce, or ‘Grown Man Voice’ that shows more of a parallel to vintage A Tribe Called Quest - in fact, the final third of the album slows down considerably with more ‘conventional’ rhythms and it’s a good breather to allow McKinley Dixon to give his audience a bit of breathing room… or really to just exhale! And this is where I have to credit how he uses guest verses, who often can flow at the same speed and remain thematically consistent - honestly, the guest verses are uniformly great, but I was probably most impressed by both of Micah James’ verses - but might not bring the same complexity or stylism to bear, and while that means many of these songs remain a bit dense, there’s a little more variety to bracket the hooks. But still, this is where I can see some people maybe feeling a little intimidated by this album - it’s less than fifty minutes but its density can make it feel a little longer, especially given how it starts close to full force, and where I don’t think the Kendrick comparison is really apt, given how he prioritized more accessible moments. McKinley Dixon has said a closer point of inspiration is Kamasi Washington and what he contributed on To Pimp A Butterfly in production, but I’d argue it goes further in that while Washington makes some amazing music, there’s a bit of a curve to get into it! Part of this is how the album feels a bit like it’s throwing you into the deep end - ‘Chain Sooo Heavy’ can feel like a bit like a clunky opener, especially with how you’re met with the unstable groove, double-time flows and the overlayered vocals by the second verse, and while things stabilize into the sharper rhythms and blend of strings and horns of ‘Never Will Know’, the opening of this album will make it abundantly clear how on-board you are for this adventure. But if you are… man, there are so many stellar musical moments, with maybe the only thing I could criticize in the production being some occasionally iffy vocal blending. I love how the strings build subtly behind ‘Bless The Child’, a precursor to how the koto cycles into the utterly manic crescendos on ‘make a poet Black’, I like how ‘protective styles’ is a welcome breather right after, a perfect soulful guitar-backed midpoint with terrific basswork and strings, and there’s just so much swagger on ‘brown shoulders’ off that guitar line, horns, and the vocal embellishments from Ms. Jaylin Brown! But even as the album slows a bit, we get the bass and creaking warp of the strings bending off the thicker beat on ‘B.B.N.E.’, the blast of horns midway through ‘Grown Man Voice’, the beautiful interweaving harp and piano on ‘Mama’s House’, and the melancholic sax drifting across the added vocals from Deau Eyes as the strings and drums slide back in for a communal moment on one of the few downbeat endings that can really work for me.

But coming back to that curve, now we get to the lyrics, and where given the layers I can see how this album might seem difficult to parse… but not at first. Indeed, for as blunt as some of the hooks and punchier lines can be, it seems like the themes materialize pretty damn quickly: how the Black community can process grief and collective trauma, and McKinley Dixon is going to paint the scene in a way that’s both visceral and given where he’s from, likely pretty transgressive. It also builds off of the roots laid down on his first two projects, with Who Taught You To Hate Yourself? examining Black masculinity and The Importance Of Self Belief adding the feminine side to the equation - this project necessarily builds on the emotional growth of both albums, but more to add shades of complexity to his scenes and poetry. You can tell that the loss of a close friend from street violence is most on his mind - and the deflective stoicism often expected of Black men is not helping, which can stretch through generations as described on ‘Grown Man Voice’ - but the title of this album makes it clear he’s trying to look outside himself for this more universal story, peel through aged layers of trauma to find some sort of solace. This ties into two metaphors that carry a lot of weight across this album, especially given their persistent ambiguity, the first being more conventional with the ‘chain’ representative of success, wealth, talent however it’s perceived, status… but also every link to the system and past that imbue it with weight, both on his soul and for everyone else desperately seeking it - or even just a tie to family and the community that can’t be broken. But the metaphor I found more striking was that of wings, for which he sees on all of his brethren in the streets representative of the desperate hope and vitality and freedom they might have… but also shades of Icarus and the flimsy escapism of Peter Pan, and how said angels can be quick to be returned to God. But this album’s relationship with faith is considerably more confrontational than you’d expect - and not just to religion, which he treats as a system of hectoring, ossified ritual that cannot effectively heal the soul or address the brutal reality of the streets and white supremacy - but even God.

And that’s heavy - this is an album where the statement that ‘God will provide’ rings hollow in the face of lost brothers and broken systems where everyone claims righteousness, where funeral rituals can’t disguise unjust losses, where ‘God damn’ is more than just an exclamation, where he wonders if Jesus and his crew were considered a gang to those who opposed their radical and transformative ideas, where heaven might feel too close and he doesn’t want to go yet, where too much light can feel like an abyss and hell might not be so bad. And all of that is placed in context with the insecurities that are buried in a shallow grave at best - McKinley Dixon knows he’s not the realest, he knows not everyone is going to catch the vibe, unlike Kendrick he’s not looking to assume the responsibilities of leadership or the empowered father figure who can pull forth Excalibur, and while he knows his talent for rap could be a Lazarus Pit of resurrection to get him out, that creates a new chain, with pendants for those sacrificed to do so. And that doesn’t even touch on the vivid suicidal ideation all across this project, which you might expect from someone in the harrowing crossfire of the streets, especially when you feel you’re surrounded by the angels to take you home and it would be so easy. More often than not it reminded me of Mike Mictian’s closing lines on his verse of ‘.38 Airweight’ on the All Hands album by Doomtree, featuring the same sort of aiming your gun at God - but that was a passing line on a survivalist album - on this project it’s text at the forefront and it’s the natural outgrowth of collective trauma, where the crowns feel increasingly heavy and hollow and the rituals of grief are not enough.

And yet, despite a crisis of faith and deep-seated anxiety that runs through so much of this album, it’s not bleak or even hopeless - there’s too much of a spirit here to run on nihilism, and that’s might be the roots off the most stirring parts of this album. If he’s found a way out, he needs to be that figure for the kids and the community and his family, and you can tell he can’t even pull himself to blame those who might kill or be killed in the streets: he knows the true roots of all of this are broken white supremacist systems, like Killer Mike on ‘Thursday In the Danger Room’ he can’t find it in himself to blame those who are trying to survive, even if they cause him pain to find their own angel’s wings, especially as he knows he isn’t innocent among them. It almost feels cavalier at moments, how his own reckless pursuit of his wings and chain can show raise a question how much he values his own life, especially alongside others - how very Spike Spiegel of him. But hell, even when it comes to faith you can tell he wants to believe - he never wanted to feel bigger than God, he just wanted to outrun his death, cherish the moments he feels alive, and along the way be there for his family and friends - and by the end of the album, the stoic veneer breaks completely and he has to confront the pointlessness of the death and the added, painful burden that comes with survival, especially when one death can sever a family tree through its cascade of consequences. But you can also tell he’s done some of the work to process that trauma - the song veers on the line between sardonic and weary earnestness, like most of the nuggets of humour on the album, but ‘protective styles’ mantra of how they need therapy is plain, and the line that really jumped out at me came on ‘Brown Shoulders’ where he references ‘how to turn money up into feelings’, an inversion of what you normally see from rap but highlighting how that security can at least give you the space to take a breath and process things. And even here, this is not an album that disbelieves in rituals, because at least with family it can provide solace, linked predominantly to Black hair which he still gets cut within the family, sees his lineage going both backwards and forwards, but even if their light exposes his blemishes, beneath those blemishes is a light of his own. It’s a feedback loop, of how that survival and healing isn’t just for them, but for him as well, provided they have the time.

…look, this is the sort of project that will throw a lot of listeners who aren’t prepared for it. Once you get a handle on the flows and off-kilter moments, you have to untangle the poetry, which could be viewed on a metatextual level as the defensive mechanisms thrown up to deflect from trauma that gradually are peeled back, but as I said, you can feel and pick up on that heaviness very early and it rarely subsides. But while there is a lot of complicated emotionality on display, it doesn’t overwhelm so much as it reveals - for as much as you put into this album, you’ll get out more. This is virtuoso talent across the board, but also a lot of very real honest humility that lends it a populism that made me want to keep listening. And on a level of pure technical craftsmanship… goddamn indeed, I’m not sure it’s been paralleled this year. So a 9/10 - if you are a fan of rap, jazz, or even just great music, you owe it to yourself to hear this - what a find!