Notable Tracks: “The Old Guard is Dead,” “I Gazed Upon The Trap With Ambition,” “The Apple That Scarcely Fell,” “Critical Acclaim,” “Branded“
#GoyardHere
Ghais Guevara has completed his masterwork and ended his tour as an underground hip-hop journeyman. His debut album takes the form of a play in two parts, featuring the protagonist Goyard Ibn Said.
The first is an energetic reflection on the triumphs of rapping, the thrill of ambition, and the love of the game. The second section takes a turn into a dark reflection of the cost of fame and the rot of the hip-hop industry unlike anything Guevara has ever done before.
Throughout the album, Guevara shows off his idiosyncratic production and flow, mixing in samples from Spongebob, classical music, and soul, while writing wordplay with references that range from David Fincher’s “The Killer” to J. Sakai’s “Settlers: The Mythology of White Proletarianism.”
These references paint a pointillistic picture of Guevara – his love of the rich history of hip-hop, a Philly upbringing, his roots of black radicalism, and a fiendishness for brands like Prada.
The leftist braggadocio he cultivated on his first mixtape, “BlackBolshevik,” is subtler, as the persona of Goyard takes over for the album. The pastiche of different styles and sampling coalesces to create an awe-inspiring sound, mastered from his previous mixtapes.