Wahid x HEAT PRESS! (feat. KIM)

Wahid shares “HEAT PRESS!” (Feat. Kim), following up the EP’s lead single “GENESIS!,” which he performed for On The Radar (up above). At the center of THEY ALL GO MAD! is the paradox that life is an act of faith, and true wisdom can be found by gambling on love or a creative pursuit. In eight tracks, Wahid presents windows-down anthems reverberating with atomic energy and pulverizing drums, dazzling aerial cadences and subtle moral clarity. Bangers, but suffused with a sense of a higher purpose. Anger deployed to righteous ends. 

THEY ALL GO MAD! reflects an ongoing quest to find peace and stability in a world riven with malice and flux. It’s the partial extension of themes from his last release, feast, by ravens. In the fallout of the breakup of his vaunted nine-person collective, seeyousoon, creation led to personal catharsis. If feast was slightly experimental in its lyrical and production choices, THEY ALL GO MAD! revels in its confrontational sensibility. The first words on “Genesis” are “watch your step, kid.” A sly allusion to the opening salvo on Wu-Tang’s first hit, “Protect Ya Neck.” The intention is clear. No quarter will be offered. Wahid aims for the jugular, but he’s still got jokes. The beat from his long-time collaborator, Vitamn (who produced seven of the eight tracks) sounds somewhere between a celestial coronation and a lost outtake from Illadelph Halflife. 

Raised in Central Florida, Wahid was steeped in rocksteady, dancehall and reggae dubplates by his father, a Jamaican-born DJ. As a teenager, Wahid’s older brother exposed him to the classics of hip-hop’s second Golden Age. As he describes it: “Nas made me want to rap, listening to the GZA’s Liquid Swords made me good at it, and Black Thought helped me refine my skills.” 

Consider the Orlando rapper a radical traditionalist. In another life, he could’ve been the fifth member of TDE’s Black Hippy: a Swiss army knife capable of merging classic MC traditions with forward-thinking flows and melodies. With his double-time acrobatic patterns, he’s distinctly post-Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne – blessed with a novelist’s eye for minor detail and a virtuoso’s gift for ransacking hidden pockets of a beat. He can turn a warped post-Dilla instrumental to ashes with 16 bars and croon a plaintive falsetto wail on the hook that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Jeremih album. These vaunted gifts make THEY ALL GO MAD! the rare modern record that rewards careful listening.

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