Click album cover to purchase.
Exalted is Nacho Picasso and production cohorts Blue Sky Black Death’s third installment of gothic thuggery (their words). Pitchfork and Stereogum are already acclimated to the team’s moody brand of glacial rap (also theirs), so what are you waiting for?
NP and production cohorts BSBD high in Austin. (Borrowed from Lar’s post in LineOut.)
The latest clip from Nacho Picasso. Get Lord of the Fly, here.
(News travels down hill: from Spin to The Stranger to your lowly bottom feeder, 206UP. The circle of blog life.)
Deserts, death and drugs. Happy Friday, everyone! Get Nacho and BSBD’s latest here:
I like to think of Nacho Picasso hunched over his vintage typewriter, plunking away at his latest nard-core (that’s “nerd” + “hard”) gangsta tome. Something like the Black Hunter S, shroomed-up and isolated, but ready for whatever the next day’s sun illuminates. Welcome to the underground rap life.
Click image to D/L.
Pok Pok just opened a Manhattan location in the Lower East Side, so that is where I’m going. Right. Now. But before I tighten the velcro on my ProWings, here’s Nacho Picasso’s latest, Lord of the Fly, with production cohorts Blue Sky Black Death. Peep that album cover. Looks like a regular Wednesday night for Nacho. Have a great weekend everyone!
I rarely toot my own blog horn over here, but a few relevant posts ago I called Nacho Picasso “[Possibly] Seattle rap’s Next Big Thing.” That was here. This is now. After a big look today on Pitchfork, not to mention the previous not-quite-as-huge “Mixtape of the Week” selection over at Stereogum, it’s become quite clear that the Cloud Nice affiliate may soon turn my humble presage into a cold hard reality.
No matter. Dude (like this blogger) seems content to just do his thing, replying to my congratulatory Tweet today with this blushing response: “bro I’m in awe my damn self I aint even smoke yet I’m just high right now?lol” That reaction seems at odds with his often hostile demeanor on the album in question, For The Glory (which you can still grab for free here — I’d hurry if I were you). On FTG, Nacho moves predominantly in shadows, showing glimpses of revealing humor and pathos, but generally perpetuating an air of sociopathic deviancy (peep his latest clip above, “Moor Gang,” for a visual sample). Judging from today’s developments, however, the rapper must learn rather quickly that even the most expert night predators can’t exist solely in the darkness forever.
Click album cover to D/L.
Nacho Picasso’s proper debut LP, For The Glory, was one of 206UP.COM’s most anticipated SEA releases of 2011. Talk around the office water cooler mostly centered around the crew handling production on the album: Blue Sky Black Death. Seattle’s most well-known unknown production outfit is the party responsible for the greater majority of sound on FTG, one that pairs the duo’s well-developed ominous electro with Southern trap’s familiar slap and bounce.
The idea of coupling of Nacho’s Wayne-ish rasp and punchline flow with BSBD’s dark atmospherics sounded odd at first, but FTG shows the Cloud Nice-affiliated MC is the perfect man to handle the job. His toned-down flow suggests rap vocals set on a low boil. Dude is subtle enough to hypnotize at times but maintains a heinous wit that borders on the sociopathic (or at least darkly comedic). It’s true the act wears thin after a while — the album could have benefited from a bit more diversity in sonics — but with tracks like “Bad Breaks” (which sounds like the score to your most frightening Halloween night, ever) and the get-lifted-with-me slow crawl of “NumbNuts,” most repetition can be forgiven.
206, meet your newest and most charismatic rap star, Nacho Picasso.
Nacho Picasso might be Seattle rap’s Next Big Thing. And that definitely wouldn’t be all bad. This video was spotted over at SSG Music (#ConflictOfInterestAlert). All the insight needed (along with an exclusive leak) on Nacho is in SSG’s authoritative preamble to the MC’s next movement, For The Glory, featuring production work by electro savants Blue Sky Black Death. “Sweaters” sounds like trap music recorded underwater in slow motion, and it’s all about tattoos. Not that my opinion counts for anything, but Seattle needs hip-hop like this to pull itself out of a self-induced backpacker funk (and this is coming from someone who counts that style of rap as his preferred sh-t). Voices like Nacho’s are criminally under-represented in this Town. Time to stop the marginalizing.
Click photo to D/L.
Here’s an outtake from Nacho’s Blunt Raps mixtape from a couple years back featuring Young TH of State Of The Artist. It’s about girls. Production by Blue Sky Black Death affiliate Raised By Wolves.
“Heaven” – Nacho Picasso & Young TH
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