Perhaps it’s the crackles and hiss, the sway and the swagger, or the lunge and the lean, that make this track stand out. Perhaps it’s the loving use of film noir dialogue that brings the imagination into a familiar but distant environment. Perhaps it’s the moody atmosphere and its abrupt discontinuation at the end. Perhaps it’s hip hop with a hint of jazz. Perhaps it’s not just that.
I first encountered L’Orange through the track Alone which features Blu. After giving the rest of his album a listen and doing a bit of research on what he’s done beforehand, I discovered that L’Orange’s approach to music is, in fact, quite heavily rooted in poetry. It’s odd to think of The Mad Writer as a poet – poets are often contemplative and succinct with their words, never in a frenzy – but the album gets its character, and convincingly so, from this apparent contradiction. After all, L’Orange regularly quotes Pablo Neruda, and speaks of Tupac’s poetry with equal admiration; he gives his many obscure vocal samples (“digging in the DVD crates”) as much exposure as his beats. At the core of it all though is this love of rhythm, texture and flow, a love that has long served both hip hop and literature (and cinema, for that matter). Somehow this essential connection has never been made obvious until now, and L’Orange does so with great respect for the craft of those who inspire his music.
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