BRING BACK THE BOOM: Diabxlikal Kay just keeps swinging

Roll a few joints, get yourself comfortable, set up your sound system and let’s listen to some underground South African Hip Hop, let’s cut through all that capitalist noise, hi-fidelity fast-fashion, let’s bask in a sound both dusty and dubbed out, space-aged and funky, let’s listen to words from the land of the world’s old soul, let’s roll with the chill vibes and some live poetry, shall we?

Something in the way that sound was catching on the breeze, the roars of my neighbours lawn mowers and chainsaws had a certain warble to it, a novel sonic signature of the Evergreen hillside. I was always trying to sleep in while the whole suburb went after its lawn regime with extreme prejudice. Back in 2022, around this time I would listen to the epic single KAY’S WAY on loop for hours, learning the lyrics and getting to know the cadence, flow, and tone of the TPG RECORDS artist who goes by the name of DIABXLIKAL KAY. 

This week TPG (based in WELKOM 057) dropped his latest release BRING BACK THE BOOM. Arrangements and production by KXNG LXCX maintain the beatmaker’s lo-fi, atmospheric trademarks (full in effect on the track BOOM LYF) while throughout this ep giving the emcees plenty of what it’s title promises: more boom to the bap, heavy bass to shake those bins and bus-woofers, enough old school flavour to rinse out those mainstreams AI beats, erase those auto-tuned versions and tired verses right out of our collective akashic memory banks. Tracks like ALL I KNOW and BOOM FLY serve up hot bars of hardcore funk, head snappers and booty shakers with a Pete Rock/ Large Professor palate of standup bass, woodwinds, keys and other jazzy flavours to trumpet in these hard-hitting, straight to the point doses of cyphers and sigils. Regular collaborators MACKS KEITH (who stole the show with his incendiary 2023 single SILENT) FIFTH DIMENSION and INKARNATED POETREE (who’s been appearing on KAY’s releases since 2021’s BROWN PAPER) contribute stellar guest features alongside the capable DANIËL LENYATSA (who’s made his prescence felt on TPG releases over the past year, including the latest INKARNATED POETREE joint NOVEMBER), let loose on the track BOOM STYLE to demonstrate their spoken jazz and lyrical conceptions. TPG RECORDS is a very exciting coterie of talent and determination just beginning to extend their depth and reach of influence. Bring back the Boom. TPG for lyf. F’ real.