(Broken Tooth/Shogun)

Calling a song ‘My Struggle’ is asking for trouble

There’s a moment in What Did You Leave, this collection of hardcore hip hop’s most noteworthy song, where Swarmy takes an introspective moment to tell us about an arrogant battle rapper being brought down from his own pedestal without having given the world anything lasting or worthwhile. It’s a depressingly accurate summary of every other song on the album, track after track of aggressive rhymes over sinister boom bap, with a too-brief break for something resembling a grime beat on Plot Your Demise. It’s ruined by samey verses with the usual themes of how X is precisely this much better and tougher than Y, with a simile comparison to pop-culture phenomenon Z. There’s a difference between having a theme and a focus and plain being boring, and Dental Records Vol. 1 crosses that line. It’s one of the rules of making a mixtape: don’t use too many songs that sound the same. Fifteen is too many, guys. While you’re at it, stop turning up the echo on the last word in a verse and stop using the word faggot like it’s an insult. Cheers.

JODY MACGREGOR

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