inspectah k - rebirth assessment
“My story is endless: it never repeats itself. Why should it?”
After years of collabs, comps and flips, I think inspectah k dropped his best project yet right before the year closed, leading to undoubtedly many more playthroughs into the new year and beyond. I find his undying passion for the beat scene really admirable; in the last year alone producing a string of insightful interviews with modern-day underground beat legends, crafting the massive 4RAFAH* comp tape and keeping the goldmine of his ‘picks’ YT page fully stocked with new sounds. When rebirth assessment dropped, it was a necessary reminder of inspectah’s strength beyond being just a curator and a solid connector of the scene, but as an incredible beatmaker too. rebirth feels like taking a long, long roadtrip staring into an endless distant horizon, the sun beating overhead and only beginning to dawn as the crispy drums and jangles start to give closure on ‘repeats.’ The jazz mastery found in spades across the tape ranges from sombre to sublime; the wailing horn tones of ‘surat’ contrasting against sweeping flutes on ‘intuitively’, various moods shifting in and out between beats. Sometimes he’ll play the drums more straight on ‘unknowns’ only to lull you into a false sense of trance when the acoustic hollow percussion on ‘tauhid’s’ comes clanging in. The whole thing embodies this sense of intent I love in tapes, like he’s crafted more than just a collection of beats but something that feels both free and meticulously put together. I can only help but think so much of the variety of it comes from the variety of the actual listening inspectah does himself, influenced just as much by Pharoah and Sun Ra as he is by Madlib and Tuamie as he is by Samm and Duro, and the list goes on. But he seems to soak all of this up like a sponge on rebirth assessment, producing something that sounds wholly like him; deeply personal and brimming with passion.
KEY BEAT: nabawi - inspectah shows off his ability to create a groove out of a sample so scattered and sporadic, then immediately switches into something smoother but equally tight, the little runs of acoustic guitar guided by dazzling keys and a single high-pitched never-ending tone, just like that horizon in the distance.