Esham, the rap kingpin of Detroit, isn't for everyone. The only other person as bizarre as he is in hip hop is probably Kool Keith, and Keith is probably even more bizarre, but they are very different. (Keith and Esham collaborated on Keith's classic album 'Spankmaster'.) Esham is pretty straightforward, a straight gangsta rapper, but his natural eccentricity comes through on all his projects. The beats are on some other, other, other isht and Esham raps alot about demons, ghosts, evil spirits and so on. I haven't peeped too much of his stuff in recent years, mainly because he aligned himself with the ICP crew... though he recently made an album dissing ICP and distributed it at the Gathering of the Juggalos, which is pretty awesome and ballsy. ICP would be the first to admit that they wouldn't exist without Esham. I know to most people that probably makes Esham sound somewhat terrible by association. Esham's first album "Boomin Words From Hell" came out in 1990, when Esham was like 13 years old. I have it on cassette. You can't really blame him if some lame people were influenced by him. I mean, Eminem was influenced by him. So, he was one of the very first 'Horrorcore' rappers, he's from Detroit, one of the scariest places, period, and he has just released a horror concept album. Each track is about a different horror icon/theme and this has to be the only rap album to ever sample "Ichi The Killer". Its pretty obvious that I love it. Its pretty amazing. Who else besides Esham would make a rap song called "Attack Of the Blob", where he rhymes about being not only the blob, but a crime kingpin. Yeah, he's got the whole city covered, so he's the "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah blob!"?!
Then there's a song called "Evil Dead", where one of Esham's boys with a wicked cool accent raps about being Ash and he takes it right from 'Evil Dead' through 'Army of Darkness'.
Then there's "Freddie Krueger" where someone named Dr. Hustle rhymes "I'm Freddie Krueger with a brand new Ruger/leave that ass stinkin like a pile of manure". Horror nerds would argue that Freddie would never just shoot someone, but I think that's a pretty good rhyme.
Then there's "The Invisible Man", which is, of course, about what the Invisible Man would do in a strip club. Seems like a wacky premise, but remember, Esham is from Detroit. This is a family oriented blog, so I won't go into some of the racier details, but a guy at the bar says "Yo, who just drank my drink?!" and Esham says "The Invisible Man!" Awesome.
This is a very entertaining horror-rap album. It kind of tries to be serious at the same time as being 'creepy', which might turn some people off, but for me it just kind of made it more fun. My favorite horror-rap album of all time is Kool Keith's turn as Dr. Dooom: "First Come, First Served". Keith's brand of horror-rap is more like a totally over the top Troma movie, so out of control that it is impressive but doesn't actually scare you (although some of the tracks reach such a level of dementedness that they actually are pretty disturbing.) This is more like a gangsta guy that loves horror movies paying homage to the genre. Might not be for everyone, but I like it. If you like hardcore rap and horror movies, you'll probably like it too.
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