“This is not a rap concert. This is not an album,” New Haven MC and poet Ibn Orator says toward the end of “Soul Food — Act 1,” the second track on his debut EP, Brand New Eyes (Vat in Perspective). In many ways, he’s right.
There are beats, and verses, and some memorable vocal hooks scattered throughout Brand New Eyes. But there are a lot of elements in these ten tracks that thoroughly subvert the expectations of hip hop. And these qualities — a cinematic approach to album flow that relies heavily on ambient sounds, abstract samples, and layers of wordless vocals — make the EP tremendously successful as an album.
The seventh track, “Ghetto Gospel,” is easily the most straightforward track on the album, with the uptempo production and long, developed verses we’ve come to expect from a hip-hop track. But it bears the marks of the sonic and lyrical explorations that fuel the rest of the album. The first half-minute evolves from a spoken word bit and the sound of a radio tuning, and the production in the end finds the quality of the sample almost disintegrating. In between, Ibn Orator gives us observations about religion, esoteric knowledge, and materialism, but there is an underlying theme of consciousness — spiritual, physical, and political — that permeates the rest of Brand New Eyes.
“My development as an artist is a direct result of what I’ve been exposed to,” said Orator. He was born and raised in what he calls the “city confines” of New Haven (his mother is American and his father from Trinidad and Tobago) and went to Common Ground High School. When he was 19, hip hop “creeped its way into my life as a catharsis in times of tumult.” He is now 23, with a string of gigs, material, and collaborations under his belt.
Orator produced all but one of the tracks himself — he put the album together over the past two years — and this lends the EP some real cohesion, as the structure of Brand New Eyes is echoed in the individual songs. The sonic palette is minimalist but not spare, allowing an organic flow from vocals to sonic abstraction. On the album’s longest track — “WWOACV-Sermon 9” — a recurring sample of an accented female voice talking about nature and the expression of emotions, particularly grief, begins the track. Orator’s verse fades in from the end of this sample, ever so slightly accented with certain words and phrases filtered or processed, echoing and building upon the observations of the sample. The beat fades in and out. Sounds of rain and static serve the same function as a hook might in a more conventional production, but with a different effect. Orator’s relaxed flow gives the impression that he’s sharing something he’s tapped into. So when the beat gives way to a poignant sung vocal passage and a stirring instrumental postlude, it feels like a logical progression, even an evolution.
On the one track not produced by Orator — “I Think (Retrospective)” — producer Fanon Beatmaker uses slow synth chords and a quiet, distorted beat behind a palette of bells, admirably complementing a slow, steady verse by Orator. It differs from the rest of the album by relying more on conventional sound sources, but it doesn’t disrupt the flow at all.
Orator clearly has an affinity for the traditions of hip hop, as evidenced by his skill on the mic and as a producer. His flow, inspired by some of the rhythmic logic of performance poetry, is tight when it needs to be and free to roam when it can. But it is also clear that Orator is not seeking to be defined by hip hop. He’s a sound and word artist who uses some of the techniques of hip hop in his toolkit, but through the use of ambient sound, samples, synthesizers, and some truly innovative production, he becomes as much a director as a musician. Brand New Eyes is an ambitious debut, and leaves me very excited to see what he does next.
Ibn Orator’s Brand New Eyes (Vat in Perspective) may be purchased directly from the artist at his Bandcamp page.
