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AWOL ONE
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At times, this purported act of self-definition gets subsumed by the dissonant, gnashing, angular sound that’s become the soundtrack of underground white-boy hip-hop nerds everywhere. My guess is that this Southern Cali rapper owes that sound to his regular tour partners in the Def Jux and Mush Records camps. More than that, though, AWOL One suggests his own deeper local lineage, one that outsiders might be surprised they’ve never heard merged with hip-hop before: the indolent, singsong, vaguely Mexican-American dialect of Cali stoner/surfer/skateboard culture. In those moments, the rapper’s patter shares more with a Cheech and Chong skit or a Suicidal Tendencies monologue than with any standard notion of hip-hop "flow." And on the sweetest tracks, it has the effect of generating a real Spicoli-like charm — "Life’s a casino that don’t have chips/[pause] A record that always skips," or "If I had a heart it would beat like this/If I had a brain it would think I’m stupid." But, yes, there are also occasions when it’s just as well that the gnashing, angular stuff drowns out his off-key drone. And even that’s sort of fitting, y’know, dude?
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