Caring Is Creepy

posted in: Artist Features

SumKid Majere’s hip hop education is as comprehensive as it gets”gleaned on city streets and country towns from sea to shining sea. Raised between Oakland and North Carolina, the rapper blends his bicoastal influences into a signature style: sentimental and sinister. Kakalak All-Stars pays homage to his Carolina roots. It’s a sunny, summertime shout-out to old friends and family. But, as the warmth spreads, it fades, like the last flickering images on an old Super 8. Then the dark starts creeping in. We Be Pubbin elevates boozing to an art form. It feels almost like an old-school track, with SumKid playing a menacing version of Shock G from Digital Underground. Sepulchral moaning and spooky, pitch-shifted vocals give The Crawl a similar foreboding. The track is about the good old days spent cruising around with the sub woofers blasting, but it sounds more like an elegy. We’re used to nostalgia feeling sweeter, but SumKid’s music seems to infer a danger in looking backwards too much. Or maybe he just likes a scary beat. Either way, the fear factor works.