Hi-tech hip hop from H31R.
There’s a lot to be said for more brevity in hip hop; whilst a few premier high-end talents can get away with an 80-minute odyssey – and plenty more try – the sometimes relentless nature of it can feel like a listening battle of wills.
H31R (it’s pronounced heir/air – we had to check) are a New Jersey/Brooklynite outfit consisting of producer JWords and Brooklyn rapper/vocalist maassai, neither of which are respecters of particular genres or the need to spend a lot of time getting to the point. Released in 2021, their debut album ‘ve·loc·i·ty’ moulded jazz, juke and bass-heavy club vibes together ambitiously, the dozen tracks coming in at under less than half an hour.
Its follow-up continues to value not fucking around as a quality, but just as importantly in the testosterone free world of female rap, leaves the turgid guns and bling cliches on the side. What mainstreamers will need to get their heads around before they dive in though is the lack of familiar tools; much of HeadSpace relies on lo-fi techno and mood-lit samples as its musical sources, a nod maybe towards a fresh generation of rappers and producers (JPEG Mafia, Navy Blue, Armand Hammer) that live to mess the rules up.
As both JWords and maasai are solo performers in their own right (in 2021 the latter released her solo debut With The Shifts) it would’ve been easy given the break between records to slip back into their old feel, but if anything this second album packs a mightier punch than its predecessor, the rawness of its flow a juxtaposition to the sometimes frosty and austere beats. As before however, intent and gravity are almost ever present.
The exception to this is At Ease, a 45-second interlude that over what seems hardly more than a blueprint finds a less than engaged maassai determined to rise above block drama. Placed at the album’s post-frantic midpoint, what’s gone before it seems both to linger and yet scream by like an express train.
In this landscape, opener Glitch In Time has all the menace of a Berlin warehouse at 5am where you can’t find the door, but it then morphs in Backwards, the kind of oscillating noise a Bronx Delia Derbyshire might be making now, whilst the rhymes could be about almost anything in retrograde orbit, like cosmic battle rap between warring satellites.
Not surprisingly given the out-there nature of their approach (JWords was recently interviewed by kit manufacturer Roland and let slip she’s commonly referred to as ‘Gadget Girl’), the duo have been intent on creating a network of like-minded collaborators.
This bears fruit as Chicago-based rapper and producer semiratruth appears on Glass Ceiling, delivering stream-of-consciousness lines over the simplest of programming, whilst Detroit-based GRAMMY-nominated Quelle Chris contributes an elastic-tongued, off the cuff verse to the skittering breaks of Down Down BB.
Whilst superficially the devotion to big noise from nano-equipment can seem modish, on closer listening the influential presence of both jazz and soul – particularly on Static and Shadow Self respectively – underline a broader purpose, even if the decidedly Avant Garde and abruptly sawn off closer Air It Out leaves both the questions and answers for someone else to worry about.
H31R aren’t lovers of letting people settle, jumping from one hyper state to another without a thought for looking over their shoulder.
HeadSpace as a result is never present long; more time together could’ve exposed some flaws, but might’ve made it easier to love.
