Pusha T - King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude (Album Review)
Monday, 04 January 2016
Written by Huw Baines
Pusha T’s ‘King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude’ is a record by a rapper with any bell or whistle he might desire to hand, but one where hard-nosed brevity is preferred in order to make the most of some fascinating constituent parts. There’s much to be said for knowing what you want to do and yet more for going out there and executing it.
“Lyrically, I'm always one for clarity and I don't think people will miss anything,” he recently told Rolling Stone. He wasn’t lying. A few telegraphed rhymes aside, Pusha keeps things pin sharp and crystal clear. Here he’s the veteran with things on his mind, a weathered presence in a field of upstarts, and he weaves braggadocio, drug dealing and steely wisdom through biting commentary from the top.
It’s an interesting, slightly meta, twist as his barbs are now framed by some newly-minted responsibilities as president of GOOD Music, giving his critiques a constructive rather than dismissive edge.
He has ideas about what rappers should be, based on a youth spent idolising them, and isn’t afraid to spell them out line by line. “In ya thousand dollar joggers as you rhyme about ya dollars,” he spits on Crutches, Crosses, Caskets. “Is there shame when a platinum rapper’s mother lives in squalor?”
Behind the boards, Pusha has assembled a watertight production team. Timbaland, Kanye West, Puff Daddy, Q-Tip, Boi-1da, J.Cole and Metro Boomin are among the names nestled on the credits, but all stick to the script. The beats are understated but hard and the hooks off-kilter, with each track seeking to do something unusual without disappearing beneath self-indulgent waters.
On M.P.A - on which A$AP Rocky and The-Dream join West and Pusha - the piano lick is almost stately in its execution, while Q-Tip’s FIFA becomes the record’s most exuberant cut as its quasi 8-bit hook takes hold: “Drug money kicked around like it’s FIFA.” They do very different things, but maintain the heavy atmosphere suggested by the title.
That filters down to the closer, Sunshine, where Jill Scott spins a plaintive melody over a rare foray into politics. “America, you need a miracle,” Pusha opens before tearing down right wing media outlets and wrestling with the idea of turning the other cheek in the face of mounting police violence. “These ain’t new problems, they just old ways,” he continues. “I see one time turn sunshine into Freddie Gray.”
We’re only a few months away from the arrival of ‘King Push’ and it could go a number of ways after the manner in which Sunshine signs this set off. If ‘King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude’ can be viewed as a gauntlet laid down to himself, then Pusha T might be about to do something really special.
Pusha T Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed April 27 2016 - LONDON Electric Brixton
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