Misc. Day – The Marble Gates

Pearly gates just don’t cut it for Lukah, rather than climbing up to some clouds in the sky, When The Black Hand Touches You creates a temple on planet Earth.

Opening the 16 track cypher through mystifying sounds, When The Black Hand Touches You is a perfect introduction to a rhythmic and poetic breakdown of hip-hop. Almost more spoken word than any sense of rap record, Lukah slides back the van doors with “He Went Fed” and fires upon the audience with a holy M16.

The production here is fantastic and immediately creates a daze of pot smoke reaching the stained red eyes and 88-midi keyboards. “I’m from the hood so it’s only right that I be the spokesman, I feed my dogs big meals so they keep they devotion,” describes the Memphis rhymer while hordes of production layers pile on.

Another track, “Black Coffins” aligns like a funeral march where entire streets become shut down. Lukah describes through parlor-styled production with these vocal chants and a drained symphony of single snare smacks and this sunken horn. Bordering well on feeling hopeless, “Black Coffins” has Lukah illustrating from the first bars, “Can’t trust these niggas cause they move like cobras, and they breed like roaches. Shit, my homies barely hungry, so we move like vultures.”

In this polar opposite that immediately follows, “Maroon Floors” is that first sunshine after an intense and unstoppable tundra cold. The production falls to be wraps of drum rolls and high-pitched chimes while the hiss of vinyl still falls underneath. Almost everything is beautiful and washes over the ugliness that When The Black Hand Touches You first introduced. It takes around nine minutes, but when “Maroon Floors” hits, it introduces hope back into a place where there was only desperation.

That desperation shows once again when “Negro Pie” opens the floorboards and begins to speak through uplifting production but burnt out style. “It’s us or them, ain’t no fucking alliance,” describes Lukah like a drill sergeant would shout before rolling straight into certain death. With an album that is mostly full of one-liners and quick knockouts, “Negro Pie” is the first track that really etches this emotional tearing. On one hand, it is militant and aggressive, but gives beauty to the game and forces the hand to become this teeter between survival and the most necessary.

That’s most of the internal struggle on When The Black Hand Touches You, it at points is belligerent through Lukah’s spoken word and then gives an olive branch of forgiveness. The audience is within the crosshairs and it’s all in Lukah’s hands whether he pulls the trigger or spares the poor soul.

Listen To When The Black Hand Touches You Here!!! – BandCamp/Spotify/iTunes