Steve 'Flash' JuonBenjamin Fernando Barajas Lasky is better known as Quadeca. At this exact moment I can only tell you that if you already knew that, this album is for you; if like me you didn’t know who he was before pressing play, this album is very much NOT for you. I suppose I’m giving away the store instead of burying the lead in the second or third paragraph to keep you reading, but here’s a little sample of Quadeca’s “Scrapyard” called “Easier” that I think will make it easier for me to explain the issue here.
Before I started this album I followed my usual modus operandi of learning more about the subject. He was born in the year 2000, he’s 25 at the time of publication, and he started his entertainment career through comedy sketches and let’s play videos on YouTube. Having success as a content creator gave him enviable opportunities to expand his brand as a recording artist, and by all accounts around 2019 that’s what he shifted his personal focus to. He’s described by those who know him as everything from “experimental hip-hop” to “emo rap.” That’s fine. That’s certainly nothing out our wheelhouse around here. Listening to “Easier” didn’t make either of those things evident though. The song itself is beautiful. No cap, straight up. It’s lushly orchestrated, he’s got a soulful voice, but nothing about it says rap music to me in the slightest. “Even If I Tried” to discern it in his songs, it’s only from using production styles I’ve heard from other people in the aforementioned genres. There’s no “rap” in this anywhere.
Rap has been slowly turning into this amorphous Huddle for a long time now. Quadeca is not abusing hip-hop music or culture with songs like the noisy, breathless “What’s It to Him?” or the plaintive staccato begging of “U Don’t Know Me Like That.” Frankly the wriggling mass of musical styles found on these tracks is so far removed from anything we’ve called rapping, from the days of The Last Poets to the breakthrough of artists like Kurtis Blow and Sugarhill Gang, that I can’t take this as an insult. It’s now become something that shouldn’t use the word “rap” in descriptive terms for what Q is or does. He’s a perfectly fine artist for… whatever we should call this.
Even though by all rights this should get “Under My Skin,” today it’s not in me to be mad at it. I’m beyond caring because this is beyond rap. If we had to stick any genre on this (and I’m not saying we should) I’d start with either folk music or alternative rock. Both describe what’s going on here better than any term with the word “rap” in it. If I had the opportunity to speak to Quadeca, I’d flat out ask him if he considers himself a rapper. Perhaps he does. Again — I’m just not hearing it. At no point is he spitting bars, dropping dope verses, crafting cinematic lyrical narratives, using hilarious punchlines, or scaring the shit out of right wing conservatives who find their kids listening to it. Even some of the more common tropes that might scare them like abusing lean or prescription drugs seems to absent here. I bet if Rand Paul’s children went to a Quadeca concert he’d be fine with it.
That’s how I felt at the end of “Scrapyard.” I just don’t care at all. Sometimes it’s weird, sometimes it’s loud, and sometimes it’s even haunting and sad. What is it though? Not rap. It got reviewed on a site with “rap” in the name because I was sold a bill of goods saying it was that. Quadeca seems to have at least gotten one thing right though when he says “It’s time to give up on being human” near the album’s end. I’m not sure the end result here is distinguishable from what an AI deepfake could come up with if it was asked to produce “2020’s era rap music.” This is exactly what machine learning would make – one big amorphous blob of sound that occasionally sounds human but really isn’t. If you were born after the year 2000 though and grew up watching him on YouTube though, COOL. This one’s for you.