Review Summary: A neon-tinged first hand account of a downward spiral into urban oblivion.
"So there I was...twenty-one and living a life I should have escaped from. The parties, the drugs, the violence...everything was so incredible, but...superficial. Until I found her. But when your home becomes a Hell and your Hell is certain, you think...maybe it was Hell all along. Maybe I just didn't see it that way. All I knew was, there is no God in this city...no. There is only Vice."
And with that gritty forty-nine second monologue, the stage is set for
Vice City. It's a drug-induced portrait of a conflicted young man called "Noctis", depicting a hostile environment full of temptations and illicit pleasures. Many an overzealous youth has come into such a situation with dreams of making it big, and almost all of them are swallowed up before they have time to catch their breath. Soon enough, they fall into the same patterns of drug abuse, gambling and chasing women that they once promised themselves they would be able to handle. With one of the most passionate and harsh albums of 2016, underground MC
Anonymuz has captured the essence of this descent to rock bottom and made his push to break through into mainstream hip-hop.
Anonymuz (real name Isaiah Joseph) has had somewhat of a slow burn of a career to this point. While he is very highly regarded in the underground scene, the young South Floridan rapper took a two year hiatus from releasing albums to gather himself and maintained a relatively low profile. He posted numerous dark and dystopian-sounding singles over the break's span that sampled various anime clips and references, carving his already acclaimed sound into a more distinct styling. Fans eagerly awaited the forthcoming LP and were treated to an early release of "Vice", a bitter and synth-drenched snapshot of the rapper's mental state. The track was only a taste of what was to come;
Vice City represents some of the very best wordplay and creativity in modern-day rap.
It isn't the near-perfection of Anonymuz' flow on its own that makes this such an enveloping listen, nor the down-pitched synth beats dripping with sounds of regret and misery.
Vice City is an album that is truly the sum of its parts; each bar, verse and chorus on the album has been tactfully mixed with an equally appropriate atmosphere to make these fourteen tracks come alive. Anonymuz drops references to several of his influences,
Kendrick Lamar (good kid, M.A.A.D. city) and
Big L (Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous) receiving specific shoutouts. And while these influences are apparent, Anonymuz has done an incredible job turning them into a sound that is fully his own.
Vice City is a monster of an album, representing in vivid detail what a concoction of sin and naivety tastes like. The result is all too familiar for some.
