Happy 15th Anniversary to Random Axe’s eponymous debut album Random Axe, originally released June 14, 2011.
There’s an established history of planned hip-hop supergroups that do not really pan out. It’s understandable, since these collectives feature lots of moving parts and busy schedules, and pinning everyone down to record an album’s worth of material is often an impossible task. It’s why the Psychic Friends Network (Common, Black Thought, Jeru the Damaja, and Absolute) or the Fabulous Fleas (Posdnuos, Q-Tip, Afrika Baby Bam, and JuJu) barely made it past the initial planning stages. Some have yielded solid material (see: SlaughtaHouse and a surprising number of supergroups featuring Ras Kass), but generally it proves considerably easier to do a leftfield one emcee/one producer collaboration.
As it turns out, Random Axe have a legitimate case for creating one of the best “super group” albums ever. Their self-titled debut, released 15 years ago, is an unruly brawl, held together by rappers Sean Price and Byron “Guilty” Simpson, and rapper/producer Curtis “Black Milk” Cross. It’s one of the better releases of the 2010s.
Random Axe was a long time coming, seeing as members of the supergroup had been talking about putting together an album since 2008. “It really came together through my manager trying to get a verse from Sean Price for Guilty Simpson's album,” Black Milk said in an interview with Pitchfork. “They went back and forth on the phone and came up with the idea: ‘Yo, what if we did a whole project with you, Guilty Simpson, and Black?’ Sean Price had stated that he was already familiar with my production. And that's how it came about. The first time I met Sean P., he came to Detroit, and we kicked it. So everything was love.”
The three first collaborated on “Run,” which appeared on Guilty’s Ode to the Ghetto (2008). Guilty starts that track by proclaiming, “Random acts (Axe) in the jam with macs.” They began recording and formally announced the project sometime in 2009, promoting the song “Monster Babies” to many of the hip-hop blogs active at the time.
The album got delayed due to some technical problems. “The Random Axe project got delayed because Black made his little boo-boo and erased all my vocals,” Price explained in an interview with XXL. “I’m not trying to throw him under the bus ’cause I didn’t even discuss it until he said it in another interview first, but he erased my vocals. I had my lyrics on my Sidekick and then I upgraded to the G1 so I’m actually rewriting all my verses."
These issues understandably delayed things, and hence the album didn’t drop until 2011. Even under these circumstances, the project shapes up to be an excellent album, with all three contributors executing at the top of their game.
As a producer, Black Milk has earned a rep for creating intricate backdrops, known for their musical complexity and integration of sounds from a vast array of musical genres. But for Random Axe, he creates rugged boom-bap shit. The tracks are outright filthy, while still being anchored by a hallmark of Black Milk’s production: hard-hitting, neck-snapping drums.
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Sean Price and Guilty Simpson are two perfect emcees to bless these types of beats. Both were certified lyrical hard rocks, with Sean P well into his resurgence as a solo artist and Guilty Simpson holding court as one of the grimiest emcees breathing oxygen. Here, both are in their prime, delivering their raps through sheer brute force. Black Milk only rhymes on four tracks on Random Axe, ceding his spot when the crew enlists a guest rapper to appear. However, he holds his own when he does pick up the mic and delivers many of the song’s hooks. It’s everything a hip-hop head could hope for in hearing three artists at their relative pinnacle execute at the highest level.
The album’s subject matter is appropriately gutter, as Sean Price raps: “No love letter rhymes and raps about chicks / Just a whole lot of drugging and thugging: that’s it.” Black Milk litters songs and interludes with distorted vocal samples from films like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Pulp Fiction, which further add to the gritty atmosphere.
Random Axe begins with some “end of the world shit” on “Random Call,” with all three rapping to an ethereal vocal sample. While Guilty boasts to “eat hot emcees like cold salads,” Sean Price notes that “you can call me one-dimensional / But ain't too much talking when a slug get into you.”
“Understand This” best typifies Random Axe’s coarse, no-frills ethos, as Sean Price and Guilty are at their confrontational best spitting to just a dusty drum track. The rousing “Monster Babies” has Price “punch[ing] n****s through school buses” over chopped sections of a keyboard sample a vocal chirps and shouts. Black Milk has the best verse, rapping, “The only reason why we do this hip-hop shit: it’s easy / Got n****s in hip-hop sick, wheezing / Gasping for air, not breathing / Sean P, Milk, and Guilt, the playing fields not even.”
Even with superior lyrical performances across the project, Black Milk’s production often takes center stage. On “The Hex,” the album’s first proper single, he mixes sampled material with live instrumentation as the live drums fills and searing guitars to the track’s aggressive rumble. Black Milk hooks up ghostly vocals from a vintage Japanese electronic track on “Everybody Nobody Somebody,” which features each member of the group centering their verses around one of the words in the title.
Two tracks featuring ascendant “underground” rhyme heroes rank among the album’s best. Long Island emcee Roc Marciano kicks a high-grade verse on the lyrical bonanza “Chewbacca,” proclaiming, “Brothers ain't up in our bracket / Slugs from the gatling, spin out rapping.“ Price and Guilty’s verses match Marci’s in terms of quality. While Prince observes “fucking new-jack rappers flinch when I walk by,” Guilty mocks adversaries, rapping, “Your tough talk, I don't get it / You wouldn't fight a ticket, so why recite a lyric?”
“Japhy Joe” features a fittingly unhinged verse from Danny Brown. As Black Milk pairs a raucous drum track with wailing keys that seemingly mimic the intro to the Ironside theme song, Brown asserts, “I would never fuck your bitch: she look like an aardvark.”
The crew also enlist some established Detroit legends to participate. Fatt Father, a mainstay in the Detroit scene and a member of the crew The Fat Killaz, lends his talents to “Shirely C.” Notorious rapper, producer, and street enforcer Trick Trick, of the Goon Sqwad, contributes an energetic verse to “Another One.” The latter also features a verse from Rock, Sean Price’s rhyme partner in Heltah Skeltah. He delivers his verse with his trademark grumble, rapping, “Rock filthy, the block’s feel me / I own them, fuck a Donald Trump, I’m ‘Donald Dump’—I got realty.” Still, Sean Price has the best performance on the song, rapping, “Hippity-hop n****s wanna rap in the booth cute / Meanwhile I got crack stashed up in the dook chute.”
Occasionally, Random Axe sounds a bit unfinished. Near the beginning of the otherwise outstanding “Black Ops” there’s a verse-sized gap between two hooks by Fat Ray (a former groupmate of Black Milk). I’ve often wondered if Black Milk or Fat Ray was supposed to record something there and it just never happened (or was lost). “Never Back Down” exists as a one-verse Guilty solo track, but it seems like it was originally conceived as longer song. Guilty begins by snarling, “Carnivorous slang, I feast on flesh / Orangutan, banana clips, beat on chest.” But after his 16-bar verse and a Black Milk hook, the song just kinda…ends.
The album’s two other solo tracks feel more complete, even though they’re both shorter than “Never Back Down.” Sean P. delivers a brusque 16-bar verse to a vibraphone sample on “Karate Kid.” Guilty drops a rugged 16 of his own on “4 In The Box,” experimenting with a starting and stopping rhyme delivery to weirdly distorted keys and bookended by dialogue snippets from A Bronx Tale.
With Sean Price’s tragic death in 2015, Random Axe became the group’s sole offering. We’re fortunate to have a project with three superstars in their fields coming together to record a project solely focused on giving their audience raw hip-hop. It’s perfectly imperfect and a reminder that keeping things simple is sometimes the right way to go.
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