Hip Hop Habit: Mac Dividinz
posted in: Features • Urban
If the speed of sound were translated into beats per minute, what would happen? Would there be a sonic boom like when fighter jets start climbing mach levels? Is there a flash of light and an explosion like when a gun is fired? If anyone is qualified to answer that question, it’s road-running rapper Mac Dividinz.
Lightning-paced rhyming is by no means foreign to hip hop, but it is rare. For some reason, the fastest rappers (like Tone Deff and Tech N9ne) remain out of the public eye for most of their careers, and even if they do end up achieving mainstream success, the palpable electricity associated with robotic rate never really catches on en mass (i.e. Twista). Not to say that Mac Dividinz will be the one to change that, but he’s got the goods, most notable in the aptly titled track Hypersonic Flow. Mac wastes little time showing off his nitro capabilities, exploding off the block with rhymes four times as fast as the already up-tempo instrumentals. Every element that must fall into place for a breakneck song to succeed does such, 
from the airtight beat built on crisp percussion pushing the track forward without losing its breaks to the emcee slowing things down between head-spinning verses to let listeners re-orient themselves before attention deficit sets in. The content is nothing special, and is thus overshadowed by Mac’s acrobatic tongue twisting, but any chest-thumping bark is bound to be more intimidating if spoken at a baffling velocity, especially in lines like killin’ my adversaries off and I don’t cuss/ getting’ froze in the dome like a coke rush/ spread fast like a heat rash/ and the beat fast you’ll be thinkin’ that your head’s gonna blow up.
Dividinz brushes the brakes in I Got This, a slightly slower jam promoting the same stimulating drugs: spittin’ lyrical cocaine/ insane cocaine in the brain/ releasing the deadliest strain of pain through my wordplay. He may not cuss, but this Midwestern maven is no Will Smith. Coated with autotune, Mac once more constructs a verbal firestorm hot enough to melt anything in his path, though this time the grinding industrial beat is gentrified with tinkering piano that accelerates accordingly with Mac’s sizzling speech.
This Omaha, Nebraska native (no, that’s not a typo) has been producing for quite some time now, and finally got his chance to step in front of the boards after being signed to Sunset Urban Records earlier this year. His debut LP is being released tentatively on December 15th. Keep up with him until then (if you can) and you’re bound to be rewarded with a complete album studded with more of the same technically virtuosic recordings. As always, leave your thoughts on Dividinz’ versatility in the comments below. Oh, and if you think you know how to convert miles per hour into beats per minute, we’d love to hear that too.