Cassette Review: Mikal kHill "The Snuggle is REAL"

[$8 // https://mikalkhill.bandcamp.com/album/the-snuggle-is-real]

First and foremost, this is $8 for the cassette but also $8 for the download (the cassette purchase comes with a download code) so there is NO REASON why you should be downloading this instead of grabbing the cassette.   If you don't have a cassette player then you are really on the wrong site.

When I was a kid (Well, in my youth) I mailed a penny to Columbia House and sent the stickers to BMG to get thirteen cassettes for free.   If you ever were a part of such antics you'll remember that you were to also select your favorite genre of music and then you would get "featured selections" sent to you as such.    I always picked rap and I generally got their featured selections as well as other suggestions they made to me like, "Hey, this is a rapper you never heard of but the tape is only $2 so you should totally do it" and I would.

So in some ways this reminds me of those days when I would get a bunch of cassettes by mail, mainly because all of my cassettes back then were rap.   On the whole though, this is a cross between old school hip hop like Naughty by Nature (at least musically) and something modern like Gym Class Heroes (at least vocally)   It has beats and the lyrics flow, which in a lot of ways is what is most important to me in terms of rap anyway.   Not everyone can rap and not everyone can make music to accompany it, but Mikal kHill has those basics down pat.

Now the question is- what is he rapping about and why should I care?   Well, he has a bunch of funny lines that I won't quote but you'll want to when you listen to this.   It's just the wordplay of it all that I enjoy and think you will too because as someone who grew up on hip hop I can just really appreciate this and what is accomplishing on all levels.

The most interesting part of this perhaps- or at least the part which I choose to dissect, as I could pull out any number of lines in this manner- is that he states at one point he can't get a reaction when he talks politics on his band page but he does when he mentions how Guile has the same tattoo on both arms.    It's funny (not in a haha way) but that is a lot of what the internet has become, sadly.    People (And by "people" I mean nerds) are more offended by Ben Affleck playing Batman than they are by war, poverty, hunger, celebrities without talent, homelessness, etc. etc.   You cry "Impeach Obama" and no one cares.   You say Harrison Ford is too old to play Han Solo and your notifications explode.

This is just one example of pieces of this puzzle we can discuss, but the fact that this just rings so true and there are other facts we can talk about similarly just goes to show what an amazing cassette Mikal kHill has crafted here.