Yashraj is back — this time with a 3-track EP, a near 8 minute project produced by NEVERSOBER and Talal Qureshi. Some of the tracks are ones he has played before, at festivals and shows.
I had seen [and heard] the artist play PISSED OFF to an enthusiastic crowd at the Homegrown Festival, and get people to sing along — which one would not usually see at the playing of an unreleased number. The track, almost metronomic in arrangement and a beginning similar to Kendrick Lamar’s euphoria, has the rapper chewing his words and spitting air from between the spaces of his gritted teeth. His rage dissipates into a small synthy interlude, before crescendoing into near explosion — a hyper-popesque layered screech.
PSA, produced by Talal Qureshi with the “money” interpolation that was most famously heard on Cardi B’s Money — is clever. Yashraj plays with the PSA/Paisa sound-off, and has the rapper dipping his toes back into cloud-trap — a formula that has worked for him before [after all, Dhundhala is his biggest song], crooning “Paisa aisi cheez hai zaalim/ Woh na ho toh phir bante ho Ghalib”. The artist also has retained his sense of humor — as he alludes to “adopting all his homies like Angelina Jolie”.
The last track, Paracetamol, also produced by Qureshi is perhaps my favorite. Something that sticks out, perhaps, and works best for Yashraj is that he is not trying to be anyone else — he is consistently chronically online, he is unabashed in saying “stonks” and using deepened riffs to drive his point home. Someone else rapping “Reason 3 aap gandu hai/ Sauday ke paandu hain / Kha-kha ke saand huay / Gaanay ka point nahi par deeply yeh jaan doon mein /Tu kar le jitna bhi try, you just can’t do me, bitch” would have sounded corny — but Yashraj sells it, credits to his sound and the thorough cultivation of his persona. It is clear the kind of Yashraj has been building towards, and his execution has consistently improved over the years.
What however makes his music the most interesting is the way you can see the discernible building blocks in the projects — what we all look forward to is how diverse he can make these blocks, perhaps dismantling them altogether in the process.
