At the end of “Melodramatic,” the opening cut to the album of the same name, New Haven MC Siul Hughes lays back on a bed of tango-inflected strings that seem to weep for the modern society Hughes describes, in which technology is pushing us ever further apart from each other. Hughes wants something better. “I’m really a mad scientist,” he raps, with total conviction. “It’s safe to say I belong in a place where lions live, with books written in hieroglyphs.”
Suddenly the strings cut out, mid-phrase, like someone’s just pulled the plug.
“Or is that too melodramatic?” Hughes says.
From the first song to the last, Iza Siul Hughes’s third release, the EP Melodramatic, makes good on the promise of his last release, 2013’s Lastname, Hughes. That album had a diverse sonic landscape and an inventive flow that added up to kind of statement of intent regarding the kind of MC Hughes wanted to be. It was also maybe dragged down by one brag too many, a little too much repetition. Despite this, Hughes’s facility on the mic and the searching quality of the music itself suggested he might just be getting warmed up. In November 2014 the Hughes that appeared at Puma Simone’s Something 2 Do series of hip hop shows was more thoughtful, already digging deeper than his debut full-length. In February he appeared as the special guest at poet and host Baub Bidon’s long-running spoken-word series Free 2 Spit.
Melodramatic — released last month “as a preface to Hughes’s forthcoming sophomore studio album, Book of IZA,” as the accompanying notes tell us — represents a major step forward for Hughes. The flow is even more diverse than it was before. His rhythmic turns are sharper. He uses more of his voice, from chilled out and conversational to a guttural growl to tones that rise toward panic and laughter. Meanwhile, the lyrics turn the braggadocio of Lastname on its ear to reveal the MC much more fully. The Hughes of Melodramatic is complex and introspective, tough on the world and on himself. He’s also quick to laugh, both highly ambitious and capable of making fun of that ambition.
And those ambitions aren’t just to make it as an MC. “Mantras/Park Bench” finds Hughes waxing philosophical about the need for a little distance from that race. “Take some time to build a foundation and pay for patience, ‘cause face it, we’re already slaves to green faces,” he raps. On “Megaman” — maybe the most outstanding lyrical performance on the album — Hughes turns toward social issues, his place in them, and the difficulty and necessity of doing the work of social change. The album’s closer, the emotionally disarming “Old English,” sees Hughes taking a raw look back on a lonely childhood that led to Hughes, as an adult, wrestling with the nervousness and desire to get out there and show the world what he’s got.
Throughout the album, Hughes has found a worthy collaborator in New Haven producer Cityscape, who matches Hughes’s lyrical material pound for pound. His surprising and tasty changes in texture are always harnessed to grooves that never forget to keep things moving, and keep heads bobbing. For all the strings, organs, and washes of sound on Melodramatic, Cityscape’s standout track might be “See Me Out,” which starts on a tight pulse of moody synthesizers and opens out into near jazz territory on the choruses. It’s fitting, too, that “See Me Out” starts with a quote from Yoda, that little green puppet from Star Wars voiced by the same guy who did Grover from Sesame Street, who nevertheless says a bunch of things that are actually pretty smart.
Is it crazy to want to be famous? Is it crazy to want to make art that lasts, or to work to make the world a better place? Maybe so, Hughes says. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t figure out how to be brave enough to try.
Melodramatic is available for free download through Bandcamp.
