Steve 'Flash' Juon“It was my ego that made me a cutter
I thought existence was for me to suffer”
Doechii told us that “Denial Is a River,” but zombAe tell us that “I don’t want no heroin/I don’t want no coke/you can keep your ketamine” on “how to live.” This could have been a clever literary slight of hand but in reality both songs are a warning about substituting drugs for therapy. The difference between the two comes down to the sound and the voices. IanJames, Hamhock and Banser gave Doechii a banging piano infused rap backdrop sounding like a throwback to the 1990’s, letting the female rapper have a conversation with herself like Biggie Smalls on “Gimme the Loot.” It was an incredible flex of talent by everyone involved. zombAe’s is also a flex but it’s from being self-distributed without any hype or marketing, with a minimalistic beat provided by libero, leading to a quiet and introspective rap song. Before I could place any expectations for zombAe’s “deniAl” on that one impression, the track “lo (o) se” changed the narrative.
Yes — it’s a good coincidence his album is called “deniAl” based on me tying in Doechii, but he quickly proves to be nothing like her or any other rapper I can think of. “lo (o) se” is him quite literally letting loose and losing all control of his emotions, going from a whisper to a scream and nearly blowing out every monitor in the studio in the process. “Meet me in the afterlife!” zombAe, get a hold of yourself man. It’s a harrowing journey and you quickly realize that zombAe is laying his soul bare on this record. Every thought he has good or bad is presented to you, and it’s all an “ends to the means” for him to perform self-therapy. He’s not just doing it as a catchy single that’s going to end up in TikTok videos and YouTube shorts, he’s basically cutting himself open and bleeding out over his songs.
I couldn’t find much info about zombAe other than that he hails from Chickasha, Oklahoma. With a population of 16,000 you’d probably call it rural, but it’s easily bigger than any town I knew growing up on a scale of 10-100 times over. That would have been a BIG CITY to me. Listening to zombAe though I get the distinct feeling it’s a dead end for him and he’s looking for an escape. His bipolar personality shifts on “the future” give you the distinct impression the environment is pushing him to a breaking point and without this release he’d have gone over the edge.
Here’s a cliched trope of my reviews I’m all too aware of — I enjoyed “deniAl” but it’s not for everyone. In fact if I’m being truthful I’m probably not listening to it again after today. There are no bangers here. There are no funky beats, funny punchlines, catchy melodic hooks or earworms to infect your brain. Nothing would bring you back to listen to it a second time; and yet, I still think you ought to listen to it at least once. If you’re not from the U.S. you might not understand the kind of angst growing up a rap music lover in the rural “Bible Belt” parts of the country can create. The more you embrace it the more you are shunned by your peers and the community at large, which can either break you or make you double down and love it more. Perhaps I see a little bit of myself in zombAe when I listen to him, and I can at least appreciate his need to express his angst in a productive and non self-destructive way.