Maxo Kream's Openings
How should you start an album?
It’s a simple question with many correct answers. What kind of music are you making? What are you trying to establish? Given Spotify’s effect on how money moves in the music industry, is it worth giving a shit about the album format anymore? (Yes, but that’s for another post.) Moreover, the answer changes depending on which side you’re standing on when release day finally arrives. An artist may want to open an album in a specific way to make a point, but the audience may just want to start with a banger.
The concept of opening tracks, much like the first sentence of a book or the opening scene of a movie, has always been fascinating to me. I understand openings from a narrative function. You’re establishing a world we’re going to occupy or the characters we’ll be spending time with as they go off on their journey. I see it this way because I’m a writer, and that shapes a lot of how I see the world. But I’m not a musician, and I don’t know how to think like one.
Music, most of the time, operates by these rules. But sometimes it doesn’t, and an album can open with something completely random and it might work. The other mediums can sometimes pull a similar move, but their options are far more limited. Film, TV, and video games need the coordination of personnel and equipment. Someone making music need only hop on a computer. (Same for books, but you get what I’m going for here.)
To me, when it comes to dissecting opening tracks, hip hop is the most interesting genre to discuss. In most genres, you’ll generally start with either singing or an opening melody. (There are, of course, plenty of exceptions that I’m sure are flooding your head right now. They’re flooding mine too. I said “generally” for a reason.) But hip hop is a much more lyrically focused genre that incorporates heavy use of sampling and a tradition of using non-musical interludes and skits. As a result, you never really know what you’re going to get when you press play on a rap album.
A lot of rappers start with a bang, be it the grandiose orchestra on “Introvert” that begins Sometimes I Might Be Introvert by Little Simz or “Ultralight Beam” by Kanye West on The Life of Pablo. (Sorry to bring him up. I don’t even like Life of Pablo that much, but unfortunately it’s a good example of what I’m talking about.) Some start with a skit or an interlude, like the “Midnight Marauder’s Tour Guide” on A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders or the “Intro” on The College Dropout. (Okay, now I’m just doing a bit, and this intro is also an unfortunately good example.) Some start with something completely out of left field. …and then you shoot your cousin by The Roots begins with Nina Simone’s “Theme From Middle of the Night,” from her album The Amazing Nina Simone, with about a minute chopped off and some light modification, and Kanye West’s ye begins with Kanye delivering a spoken word piece about his mental state before getting into the track. (The bit’s not that good.)
Sometimes rappers start on an emotional note, and sometimes they start with bangers. Sometimes they start with a sample of something serious that sets a certain tone before the music begins, and sometimes they start with something goofy. Rarely do you get anyone who finds a way to thread both sides of an emotional state. A funny sample that sets a serious tone or a hardcore song that sets a light mood. Of course, there are middle grounds to be found. But they’re rare for a reason.
Enter Maxo Kream, a rapper who’s begun each of his three albums with emotional bangers.
NOTE: On the weird formatting of the Youtube videos. Squarespace’s embed system is acting weird so I had to find a workaround. Apologies for the odd margins.
“Work” on Punken
The first thing you hear when you begin Punken is Maxo Kream’s father explaining the origins of his name. Maxo was born Emekwanem Ibemakanam Ogugua Biosah, and as his father explains, Emekwanem translates to the equivalent of “Don’t fuck with me.” (I’m not sure on which specific language, but Wikipedia informs me that Maxo’s family’s from Nigeria. I’ve also been unable to verify that, but given his father’s conviction when he speaks, I’m not one to question it.)
Already, we’re met with hostility, and it’s the literal introduction. Already, the album’s putting the listeners on edge. Or at least on notice. We’re about to hear from a man raised by someone who saw fit to name his son “Don’t fuck with me.” If you do a bit of googling, you’ll learn that it’s his name too. There’s already all the subtext in the world to pull from that. (If I were still in college, you bet your ass I’d be gunning to write a Maxo Kream “What’s in a name” paper.)
“Don’t fuck with me” is a harsh thing to name your son. Yet, when you hear Emekwanem Sr. explain it, there’s a very clear sense of pride. A loving father talking about his son and his family. We’re already met with hostility, but we’re also met with the other side of the coin, and also juxtaposition. Then the beat kicks in.
Some would then expect a super hard-hitting beat to kick in. Instead, we get something much more spacey and synth heavy. It’s not exactly the kind of sound you may expect from a Houston rapper, but once the beat kicks in, you can’t deny that it knocks. (Maxo has a great ear for beats in general.)
I spent a great deal of 2018 playing this song in my car. In DeadEndHipHop terms, it bumps in the whip. Yet despite it very much being that kind of beat, I still felt weird about it. It is, after all, a song about the realities of drug dealing, what led him to his life, the decisions he didn’t take, and poverty. In the song, he describes watching his older brother cooking crack, entering drug dealing at the age of 12, his father being arrested, sleeping on pallets, disrupting his family life with the drugs he stashed in the house, and so on.
It’s vivid and specific, and if one were to read the lyrics without the beat or Maxo’s cool-as-hell delivery, it would sound hellish. Yet you still knock your head to it. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the paradox of a lot of hip hop. The harshest of realities are laid bare at your feet, yet you still nod along.
The difference here is that there isn’t a lot of braggadocio to be found here. He’s just telling you straight facts, and you make of it what you will. It’s a balance we’ve talked about with Maxo before, but Maxo walks the perfect line between describing drug dealing and glorifying it, and you may mistake what he’s doing for the latter just because of his delivery and the beat. But don’t be fooled.
“Meet Again” on Brandon Banks
At some point in 2019, I sat down to listen to Brandon Banks, and when I hit the space bar on my laptop (which nine times out of ten is my play button), I was expecting to start with a banger. Something akin to “Work,” but now that he’s had a little more success, something a little more uplifting. Something that indicated that his circumstances are looking up, and this would be more of a celebration. I don’t know why thought that would be the case, but think it I did.
Instead, Brandon Banks starts with “Meet Again,” which for my money was one of the most sorrowful songs I listened to that year. (A year that would end with me putting Brendon Banks in my top ten favorite albums of the year list.)
“Meet Again” is from an unfortunately rich tradition of hip hop songs about the American prison experience. Specifically, “Meet Again” borrows the formula of Nas’s “One Love” in that the whole song’s a letter to someone he’s writing to inside. It’s a song about the many people in his life who have been or currently are incarcerated and the mental toll of watching their lives deteriorate while trying to escape the same fate himself. Though there are many rap songs about going to or visiting a loved one in prison, Maxo gets into such granular details many rap songs forgo, lending the whole song an extra feeling of authenticity.
He describes having to write letters to people because the prison officials decided to deny his visitation after they found out he was smoking weed on the way there. He describes giving money to his friend’s mother so she can put the funds in his commissary. He describes his friend’s daughter growing up. He describes the lingering guilt of not keeping in touch. He describes who’s still around and who’s died. He describes a scenario where everybody in his house, including himself, is out on bond. (Which was actually true at a certain point.) He describes how many people have turned on him because they think he’s rich from having a record deal. The list goes on. There’s a lyric in the first verse, “But let me tell you ‘bout your daughter, yesterday, she tried to walk/Every day she gettin’ smarter, other day, she tried to talk.” I don’t have kids, but it got to me.
Just to remind you, this is how he starts the album. What could possibly come next?
There are some more traditional songs. (“She Live” feat. Megan Thee Stallion is a lot of fun.) But as I described in my end-of-the-year write-up, it’s mostly a real ass album for adults. He’ll go on to write songs about the financial realities of the music industry, his relationship with his father, the struggles of everyone around him, and so much more. Thus, in a way, “Meet Again” is not only a perfect set-up as far as tone, but also in content. He begins with uncut realness, and from here on in, that’s precisely what you get.
Yet, beat wise, “Meet Again” is an easy song to listen to. It’s not as much of a juxtaposition as “Work.” Instead of head knocking synths we get a much more melancholic sound. Yet when those drums kick in, I dare you not to nod your head. Moreover, this song does a great job of strategically removing them, forcing your attention back to the lyrics. They kick in late, so you already know what the song’s about, then when Maxo wants your attention, he takes them away while keeping the cadence alive, forcing you to take in every one of his words.
It may be easy to ignore the heavier aspects of “Work.” It’s impossible to do the same with “Meet Again.”
“Cripstian” on WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
“Cripstian” is an almost perfect culmination of the previous two tracks.
Content wise, it’s more in line with “Work.” Though there is mention of prison and the people in his life who’ve caught charges, that’s only a small part of the trials Maxo describes throughout the track. On the song’s only verse, he details the death of his brother, his grandmother’s near death experience with pneumonia, the suicide of a cousin, his worsening health, his increasing skepticism of the loyalty of his former gang, the encroaching feeling that none of his accomplishments matter, and more vivid descriptions of street life in Houston.
There is also an intentional evocation of “Meet Again” in the lyrics. One of the first lines we hear on “Meet Again” is “I’d rather be carried by six before I’m judged by twelve.” On “Cripstian,” Maxo uses the line again in the intro, and in doing so, he assures us that for better and for worse, nothing has changed. The circumstances that plague his reality are still very much a factor, but Maxo himself hasn’t changed either. We’re still getting a Maxo album.
Sound wise, however, it’s much closer in tone to “Meet Again.” In fact, it might go even further in a certain sense. “Work” uses spaced-out synths and “Meet Again” a more traditional sound. “Cripstian,” however, is our first time beginning with a chopped-up soul sample, in this case, Delilah Moore’s 1972 song “Wrapped Up Tight.” As a result, though I personally would say “Meet Again” is the most emotionally poignant of the three, “Cripstian” feels the most melancholic. Nothing can reach further into my soul than a well deployed soul sample in a sad rap song, and by doing the same on this track, Maxo invokes the lineage of all those songs that have come before it.
And even if it didn’t… the beat on this song is just too fucking good. I don’t have a point to belabor here and it might be a dereliction of my intellectual duties to not really describe it that much and just say “it’s good” over and over again with increasing enthusiasm. But goddamn this beat is just so fucking good.
It’s so good, in fact, that once again I’m easily capable of forgetting the harshness this song is ultimately describing. But one bar always brings me back to Earth. “Weight of the world on my shoulder/Plus my granny gettin’ older/She got sick and caught pneumonia/Doctors said it was Corona.” I’m a privileged white dude, shielded from the kind of reality Maxo regularly describes in his song. Maybe I’m just fragile, but with one mention of COVID, not only was I regrounded in the height of quarantine, but reminded that everything he’s describing is still very much a part of his existence despite his rising profile. It’s like Maxo crashed into my apartment while I was listening, and brought every facet of his reality with him.
The key to Maxo’s work is that while he describes the most dire of circumstances, his music is never completely hopeless.
All three of these opening songs are bleak, and so are much of the albums that follow them. But there is light to be found. There’s reconciliations to be had. There’s an unmistakable sense of love and pride that comes out of Maxo whenever he raps about his family and the people he cares for. There is a sense that things are, despite everything, getting better.
But “getting better” implies that things currently aren’t, and while Maxo always delivers effective hip hop, there’s an unshakable realness he brings to the table. This is what it is, and you can listen to any of these albums in whatever order and be immediately hit with the truth. Every time, he uses his first song to tell you exactly who he is.
