Hailing from Brooklyn, but hardly indebted to the illustrious past of the area, Freekstile and JoeyG’s mixtape, Golden House, is an inventive and propulsive piece.
Both MCs possess smooth flows which dribble over the beats and are easy on the ear. A number of the backing tracks, while influenced by Golden Age Hip-Hop, cut their own path with some inventive flourishes, ‘F1Humanauts’ being a fine example of this. The chords that provide the backdrop of the track are reminiscent of the of kind of progressions Nas favoured on Illmatic, but the fidgety drums and quick stabs of bass mark it out as something substantially more modern.
Both barsmiths display proficient lyricism, but it is Freekstile who possesses the greater skill behind the mic. He does nothing particularly revolutionary but, to paraphrase Men In Black, he makes it sound good. I also thoroughly enjoyed the references that are dropped throughout Golden House. Alongside the rap tropes of money and $WAG, Freekstile & JoeyG explore the less generic topics of video games, TV shows and movies, with the Dexter and Gandalf references on ‘2Jedi’ and ‘Das Flow’ respectively being some of my favourites. There is also a surprising amount of remarks regarding Greek Mythology throughout Golden House, which can only be a good thing.
Like pretty much every mixtape, there are some weak moments on Golden House, but, honestly, this is one of the joys of the form and the positive merits of the album far outweigh the missteps. Golden House is available for free download, so you should download it for free and bump your head… enthusiastically.
Highlights: ‘F1Humanauts’, ‘2Jedi’, ‘Kurosai’, ‘Das Flow’, ‘Sour Kreme’ and ‘That Man’.