Welcome to the Afterfuture

Pretty uninspiring. I like new experimental things but I don't really get what was trying to be achieved here. Will never revisit and would never recommend this. 1/5.

Feeling like this sits somewhere between a Dr. Octagon, Gorillaz, and a Aesop Rock? All of those being better though. Overall, this is a pretty solid record, the beats/sounds are a tad repetitive/vibey, but the rapping is good. Author really likes his underground rappers though. But his choices are kinda weird, leaving off the aforementioned Aesop Rock but putting on a Lupe Fiasco? Maybe the list could use an El-P project or two. Run the Jewels or something. This pick feels a bit of a stretch, but good pick none the less.

Will say I'm enjoying this more as I'm going on. Usually not huge on vibey hip-hop, but this one's good. Could use a little bit of cutting though. An hour is a bit long.

I found it a very interesting album musically. Like so many records I didn't really enjoy the voice but it varied enough to keep my interest.

Huh. It's got morsels of creativity and interesting tidbits here and there, but it didn't quite stick the landing for me.

tinha potencial esse hein

era pra ser o tipo de doideira que eu esperava encontrar nesse site.
hip hop alternativo all over the place lo fi e barulhento. mas não foi muito bem executado eu achei.....

This is actually quite a varied and interesting album. After an unsure start, I got kind of on-board with it. It's quite lo-fi, and even ambient at times. Other times it veers into quite dark, discordant soundscapes. Overall the production is generally interesting and I admire the ambition, even if it's inconsistent at times.

Basic beats, low level flows, just not hitting on any level.

Loved the Buckaroo Banzai track! And the rest was great as well.

This was great.

Obscure, sci fi hip hop.

Old school hip hop. Not that bad, but not really my type

some really important tracks and some really beautiful production

I'll admit, I did a lot of research for this particular album, because I was not satisfied with the barebone Wikipedia articles for this release and the artist attached to it. I scoured the internet for as many lyrics and background information as I could find. Along the way, I came across an interview with Mike Ladd conducted by Nate Patrin for Red Bull Music Academy back in April 2015 called "Key Tracks: Mike Ladd’s Welcome to the Afterfuture", which I implore you to look up as it helped to get a lot of the context for this album straight from the source.

Without further ado, Mike Ladd is an underground hip-hop emcee and producer out of Boston. He previously played bass for various punk bands and was exposed to a rich and diverse collection of genres ranging from hardcore punk, jazz, poetry, dancehall, dub, lo-fi, and 80s hip hop. Mike got his graduate degree in poetry while recording his debut album Easy Listening for Armaggedon, which was more spoken word. Outtakes from sessions for that first record made their way onto this next album Welcome to the Afterfuture, which he worked on at Ozone Studios in New York around the same time fellow underground hip-hop group Company Flow was working on their music.

Getting into the album proper, Welcome to the Afterfuture is a sonic melting pot of various electronic beats, jazz, funk grooves, and ambiance that Mike allows to permeate and set the futuristic vibes. The ten-minute "To the Moon's Contractor" with the horns and glistening keys over hard-hitting beats, the Bollywood-esque sample into the electro-funk stomp of "Airwave Hysteria", the bubbling synths and record scratches on "I Feel Like $100", the guitar line over live percussion and rattle on "The Animist". There's a spacious quality throughout these tracks, giving the sense of being in orbit and watching what has become down below.

Along the way, Mike utilizes a spoken-word flow to make observations on his environment, in a manner that's unorthodox yet demands the listener to pay attention. Of course, Mike goes off with fellow underground hip hop Company Flow on "Blade Runners", a sequel to "Blade Runner" off Easy Listening on Armaggedon, where all three make the most of their technological references in assessing the megalopolis lifestyle being promised.

That takes us to the big concept around Welcome to the Afterfuture, in that this album is a response to Afrofuturism. The science fiction dreamed about can't keep up with where real life has gone into the new millennium. On the surface, that means we have yet to attain fancy technologies like the flying cars and Mars colonies promised on the opening track "5000 Miles West of the Future". But dig deeper and you realize that real-world problems such as racism and political turmoil are still rampant, and it takes effort to shape tomorrow in the way you want it to be. In particular, two tracks stand out the most from this record, "Takes More than 41" and "Feb. 4 '99 (For All Those Killed by Cops)", which reference the murder of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean student who was shot and killed by four New York City cops in plain street clothes, for a total of 41 rounds fired upon. It's a cautionary tale that certainly echoes years later concerning police brutality, and it's a matter of what lessons we can take from such a tragedy to shape our future.

With a better understanding of what this album was trying to accomplish, the one problem I had with Welcome to the Afterfuture was the lack of cohesion. Throughout the runtime, it felt like too many ideas were being brewed together, where the spoken poetry rapping clashed with the more ambient electronic pieces. During my listens, I kept thinking back to other underground hip hop albums with futuristic theming such as Deltron 3030's self-titled debut or Aesop Rock's Integrated Tech Solutions, and how those albums were more direct in the narrative they wanted to accomplish in weaving in their social commentary. It's not that I didn't understand what Mike wanted to achieve in his post-futurist assessment on this album, and it does reach a strong conclusion towards the end, but it was at best scattershot in how we got there.

All that said, this has been a worthwhile experience researching and coming to terms with an album that is challenging to listen to. It takes a certain someone with an open mind to become aware of what's going on in the world today and make the future their own, and that's the kind of sentiment I can take away from Mike Ladd.

Unlustiges Rappen ohne Sinn und Verstand.

Love the concept of the album, but like a lot of these concept rap albums the production seems a bit muddy the more you listen to it. I just wish the music was as good as the lyrical content.

Part of the reason I'm (mostly) enjoying this list so much is because it forces me to listen to other music genres that would otherwise have passed me by entirely.

Will I return to this album frequently? Unlikely. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Do I feel like a more rounded knowledgeable individual for broadening my horizons? Absolutely.

Man, what a disappointment. I really wanted to like Welcome To The Afterfuture but unfortunately, due to many factors i will list out, i just can't. This album just suffered from really inconsistent production quality. Sometimes the songs could sound decently mixed, other times they sounded poorly. The lyrics are also stupid and in general, the album just lacks direction and just kinda goes all over the place. Its honestly a shame these issues are present because i do legitimately really like some of the musical ideas and i would really like to see them in a better album, But alas, we have them in this album where they can't shine to their full glory.
Best Song: The Animist
Worst Song: Bladerunners

I really try to avoid comparisons when listening to music as it leads your brain to thinking about things in a particular way but for this one the symmetry with deltron3000 is too close for me not to bring it up. It doens't have anywhere near the same tightness.

Generally it all felt a bit underwhelming. The beats were good, but not great. The rapping was okay.

This sounds like someone wanted to make a hip hop record, but didn't have a bakers fuck of an idea how.... It's apparently experimental hip hop, so it experiments with trip hop by times, but not in a good way. Super juvinile, and super lame. Definately not required listening

Favourite songs: Bladerunners

Least favourite songs: Planet 10, To the Moon's Contractor, Feb. 4 '99 (For All Those Killed By Cops)

1/5

Horrifically boring and, more damning for the legitimacy of this list, horrifically inessential.

1/5

2 stars bc the production is interesting