My Gut Reaction: DJ Muggs - Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato (August 10, 2018)

The Lawrence “DJ Muggs” Muggerud comeback tour continues today on HHID. After squirreling away in the club during his dubstep year, and then retreating to South Africa to record with rap group Die Antwoord under the alias “The Black Goat”, Muggerud returned to his hip hop roots in the fall of 2017 with Gems From The Equinox, a collaborative effort with Queens rapper Meyhem Lauren released and distributed by his own Soul Assassins Records, named after the artist collective he formed during his early days in Cypress Hill. Another DJ Muggs Vs. project with Roc Marciano entitled KAOS was promised, and still is, I’m guessing, but instead of dropping that effort, Muggs opted to unleash the leftover songs from Gems in the form of the vinyl-only Frozen Angels EP (which made Max happy anyway, not just because it contained some great fucking songs, but hey, no Roc Marcy), and this fall, he’s getting back together with Cypress Hill to release Elephants On Acid, the group’s ninth full-length album. So it’s safe to assume his return to hip hop is at least for the long-term, if not permanent.

Before B-Real and Sen Dog get another opportunity to shout into microphones while stoned, however, Muggs has given us Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato, the fourth project credited to the Soul Assassins.

Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato was conceived as a concept album of a sort, although that concept is fairly loose: Muggerud has simply gathered a bunch of dudes (it’s always just dudes on these things) who excel in crime rap to weave the type of street tales that could be easily adapted into a narrative that doesn’t really exist. Unlike most Soul Assassins compilations, however, where Muggs calls upon a large swath of artists to contribute at least a verse or an ad-lib or something, Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato is limited in its scope by design, as it consists of both sides of various twelve-inch singles Muggs recorded with the likes of MF DOOM, Kool G. Rap, and Raekwon, among others, rendering this entire affair more a small-to-mid-size dinner party rather than a blowout kegger.

Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato gives Muggs the chance to play with the darker aspects of his signature, sample-based, blunted sound, as bleakly existential musical backing tends to support crime tales like none other. He’s very skilled at getting the best out of his collaborators, as well: there’s a reason why so many people line up to work with him, and it’s not just to take a selfie with the guy who produced House of Pain’s “Jump Around”. While he didn’t invite his Cypress Hill bandmates B-Real and Sen Dog to play this time around, they won’t be missed, if the instrumentals behind the early singles released to support Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato are any indicator.

1. SANTA MUERTE

A quickie interlude that both sets the tone and leads directly into…

2. DAY OF THE DEAD (FEAT. KOOL G. RAP)

… a fucking fire beat that complements guest Kool G. Rap nicely. I like how Muggerud’s hip hop comeback with Meyhem Lauren has led him to rediscover his penchant for hard-as-fuck, gritty street instrumentals that carry so much of the weight that any vocals laid atop are simply cake. (He doesn’t always manage this, obviously, but Gems From The Equinox (and Frozen Angels) proved that he still can.) G. Rap, for his part, delivers his single verse in the vein of a hungry upstart and not a rap veteran who has been knee-deep in this shit for the past three decades, but that speaks to how powerful Muggs hits with the music. I wish it lasted longer than the lone verse we ended up getting, but I’ll take what I can get at this point, and “Day of the Dead” is a stone-cold keeper. Nice!

3. ASSASSINATION DAY (FEAT. MF DOOM & KOOL G. RAP)

Muggs slows things down to a crawl, which better suits the delivery of guest MF DOOM, even though DOOM still manages to sound awkward as shit over any beat, spouting his non-sequiturs, which completely disregard the care our host has clearly put into his musical backing, at anyone within earshot. Kool G. Rap returns, sounding more fatigued and worse for wear, but still more than willing to both put in and cook up the work, and his verse rights some of, but not all of, DOOM’s wrongs. Seriously, the metal-faced one actually says at one point, “It could be whatever, dog, Bingo was his name-o”, which is unforgivably cheesy and takes the audience immediately out of the story Muggs is trying to tell. I notice Raekwon features on the next track: is it too late to put his vocals on “Assassination Day” in place of DOOM’s? What do you mean, it’s too late when the fucking album has already been released? What do you mean, Raekwon already has a feature on a song entitled “Assassination Day” in his back catalog?

4. YACHT PARTY (FEAT. RAEKWON)

Disrupts the flow a bit, as Muggerud’s beat for “Yacht Party” resembles something that his friend and (former?) fellow Soul Assassins producer The Alchemist might give to an artist suck as Raekwon, who, hey looky there, gamely appears. The Chef unleashes a one-verse wonder full of the sleepy boasts-n-bullshit that have marred his mid-career work, but that isn’t to say that his narcoleptic tendencies have returned: it’s just that his performance sounds as automatic and lazy as his worst efforts. The beat is smooth but not glamorous, the complete antithesis of a “Yacht Party”, which I’m sure was the point. Inessential listening, this one.

5. BLACK SNOW BEACH (FEAT. RAEKWON & MEYHEM LAUREN)

After listening to Muggerud’s work for crime-rap connoisseur Meyhem Lauren, his working with Raekwon makes total sense, at least more so than his proposed collaboration with Inspectah Deck all those many years ago. “Yacht Party” may not entirely work (at all), but “Black Snow Beach” is a far better vehicle for the Chef top talk his shit, and hey, looky there, Meyhem Lauren even came out to play. I actually preferred Lauren’s run on “Black Snow Beach”, another one of those badass descriptive song titles rappers tend to favor these days, as he seems more in tune with the Muggs beat, but Rae makes up for his mental absence on the yacht with a far superior performance on here. So yeah. Rae still sound best over old RZA instrumentals though, don’t @ me.

6. BLUE HORSESHOES (FEAT. MACH-HOMMY)

I loved the beat for “Blue Horseshoes”, a solo effort graciously handed off to Newark’s Mach-Hommy, who wastes little time spitting his verses, treating this as the golden opportunity it truly is. His chorus is goddamn motherfucking terrible, though: my eyes rolled so far back that they fell out of my head, rolled toward an open window, and fell into the grass below, and now I have no eyes. It sucks. But the verses are pretty good, so Hommy can be proud of those, at least, and Muggs’ simple distorted loop, which could have also been given to Lauren for a Frozen Angels follow-up, bangs. Could be a sleeper, folks, especially if someone kindly erases the hook. (*hint, hint*)

7. CONTAGION THEORY (FEAT. MACH-HOMMY)

I couldn’t get behind this shit, however, Mach-Hommy veers directly into MF DOOM non-sequitur territory, and he isn’t skilled enough yet to pull that trick off: hell, DOOM can’t even pull that shit off, and he’s been a part of this rap shit for the better part of eighty years. But my biggest problem with “Contagion Theory” (which is a cool title) comes from the musical side of the equation, as Muggerud cribs from what sounds like a particularly jazzy selection from the Pure Moods compilation advertised in an infomercial that was played repeatedly late at night back in the day. Nah, son. This ain’t it. You two can skip right past this one with impunity.

8. WALLY FACE (FEAT. HUS KINGPIN)

Muggs fares a little bit better with the slightly-less-annoying loop he deploys on “Wally Face”, his collaboration with Long Island’s Hus Kingpin, but the track still sounds incomplete. Kingpin does what he can with the sparse backing, and his bars aren’t bad, but they also aren’t convincing enough for anyone to run to the Interweb to check out everything else he has out there. “Wally Face” also plays as though Muggs grew bored with the vocal sample contained within, deciding to fuck around with it just for shits and giggles, as opposed to working toward, I don’t know, building an actual song. Ugh.

9. DUCK SAUCE (FEAT. ETO)

And the artist most likely to capitalize on his appearance on a DJ Muggs/Soul Assassins project is its least known. Welcome to the blog, Rochester, New York’s Eto, also known as Lil’ Eto, who seems to specialize in the gritty street rap our host has an affinity for these days. (At least until that new Cypress Hill album drops in September.) “Duck Sauce” is another sample looped up by Muggs (I mean, most of his beats fall into that category, really, and that isn’t a dis), but one that sounds great, and Eto comes with matter-of-fact bars that sound like they’re being performed by a far more interesting and alert Roc Marciano, except that could be read as an insult to Eto. Whatever Muggerud is doing next, he needs to put it on hold in order to give Eto a proper showcase, perhaps with another one of his Vs. projects. No bullshit.

10. N----S IS PUSSY (FEAT. MEYHEM LAUREN)

Likely recorded during the Gems From The Equinox sessions, but Muggs kept it away from the Frozen Angels EP in order to use it on Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato. It certainly sounds like it was inspired by whatever drugs those two were under the influence of at the time: this shit is hot. Muggs gives his charge another hard instrumental that Lauren easily molds into criminal boasts and such, his flow somehow sounding more engaged and easygoing than it did when he happened to pop up on Raekwon’s song. The hook is a weak link, as it acts solely as a delivery system for the terrible song title, but everything else about this shit is a thumbs-up.

11. DEATH WISH (FEAT. MF DOOM & FREDDIE GIBBS)

The first single from the project ends up being the final actual song of the album. Muggerud’s instrumental is among the most sinister shit he’s ever managed to conjure up: listen to this song while driving late at night and you’ll feel yourself grow afraid to turn down certain streets. When “Death Wish” first hit the Interweb, I chastised DOOM’s vocals while praising everything else, and nothing about my opinion has changed much since then, except I can now admit that DOOM sounds far better on here than he did on “Assassination Day”, even though his apathetic flow still doesn’t fit Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato as a whole. I’m guessing Muggs was simply too excited to work with MF DOOM to give him any notes? Fredward Gibbs, receiving a do-over on a Muggs production after appearing on “Trap Assassin”, a track from his brief foray into dubstep that we here at HHID try to forget ever happened, tries to make up for lost time by squeezing in four times as many syllables than necessary during his performance. He’s okay, but the music is the real winner tonight, Mikey.

12. OUTRO

I miss the breathy voice whispering the word “assassins” that Muggs used to lay into tracks every time someone shouted the word “soul” on his solo efforts. That is all.

THE LAST WORD: On one hand, Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato isn’t the Soul Assassins III we were promised many years ago: this is more akin to Prince Paul’s A Prince of Thieves, except Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato isn’t a hip hop opera, the artists invited aren’t playing roles, and also it’s nothing like A Prince Among Thieves. It’s very limited in its scope, but again, that’s by design. Thankfully, said scope is right in DJ Muggs’ wheelhouse, and there are quite a few bangers on here. I could have done without MF DOOM’s participation entirely: he was horribly miscast and should have been saved for an entirely different-sounding Muggs project. But every other artist included on Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato gives it their all (except for Raekwon, who comes with one good song and one bleh track). Eto and Mach-Hommy have some sleeper hits here, no lie, but the best tracks belong to the veteran Kool G. Rap and the upstart Meyhem Lauren, both of whom will have you hoping for a follow-up to Soul Assassins: Dia del Asesinato, or at the very least a DJ Muggs Vs. Kool G. Rap project that somehow features Meyhem just for the hell of it. Fans of Muggerud’s beats will not be disappointed, and street rap enthusiasts will eat off of this one for at least a couple of weeks. Go ahead and give it a stream, if not a purchase.

-Max

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