Sundays in the South are quiet—streets sit empty, as shops still close before sundown, and FM Stations that were playing the most explicit rap at night roll into early hours of gospel. On Preacher’s Son, Chattanooga rapper Tut inhabits this scene: the tape opens with a brief news item about police seeking the help of a church to capture a man accused of murder. Tut positions church as a place where a community comes together even in the most trying times. On “Corner Stories”, he raps: “Remember sitting in my uncle’s kitchen, I was 8, though/ Whipping up a little something for the pesos” and then contrasts the scene to himself in the same house innocently playing with Legos. He spins a tale of a small-time drug dealer and a simple robbery that turns into something more complicated and touches on other community ills, and even when he restrains the narrative detail, he humanizes acts both right and wrong.
Preacher’s Son is produced primarily by Ktoven and avoids common Southern rap styles (Snap or Swag) and trendy producers (Metro Boomin or Zaytoven). Ktoven creates lively and warm beats that recall when blues and funk were still embedded in Southern music’s DNA, bringing to mind a time when hearing a horn section (“Hangin'”) or a guitar (“Holy Water”) was the norm, not an exception. The uniformity gives the tape a cumulative force, but some tracks towards the middle blend together as the style gets too comfortable within its own groove.
Tut struggles throughout trying to understand the issues that ail his community and figuring out what he should do, even as he’s trying to avoiding repeating his own mistakes. The tape returns back to church with an excerpt of sermon on trying to decide whether one is just of this earthly world or joined the heavenly ranks of Christ and the Lord. Tut then closes with “Sunday Service”, highlighting a great irony of church mornings in that so many in the pews just spent the night sinning (“Damn, we gotta hurry/ Late to the Sunday service/ Last night I hit the town/ Late, I was on the screw juice swervin'”). The track is also laced with light ad-libs from fellow Chattanooga rapper Isaiah Rashad, whose presence loomed heavily over the tape even if he was never officially mentioned. But where Rashad’s Cilvia Demo from last year appeared lost with its place in the world, Preacher’s Son knows where it stands within the church aisles. Tut just needs to pull his head up and decide which path to travel.
from Album Reviews – Pitchfork http://ift.tt/1BnktlI
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