Babyface Mal – Ya Rab
This week at BIGSOUND I had sufficient people declare to me that they missed the halcyon days of sound doctrine blog so as it made me think that perhaps I should try to write a little more. And sure, I know I miss a lot of things that I’d long since stopped caring about when they ceased activity, but this comes with the added bonus of stamping a few more songs more permanently into the lineage of the blog, rather than in the ebb and flow of my spotty playlist. Twelve years of writing and I’m still pedalling these run on sentences like they don’t hurt the brain.
A record I’d most certainly have already written about if I’d been Doing Words lately is the new Babyface Mal. Man’s had a pair of mini-EPs this year as well as Daughters & Sons late last year, one of a fair few centred around a drill beat within his repetoir. Incidentally, it might have been the precursor to the Ya Rab since both sets of production are built around oud lines. Before we get into Mal, and we WILL get into Mal, we gotta take a moment for Ya Rab’s producer aywy. The production here is milk and honey, the right choices made from the oud to the hand drums to that thundering four to the floor release after the chorus. I’m itching to ring this one through car subs just to hasten the imminent demise of my hearing.
Mal though. Mal’s been threatening to elevate for a few years now, since the LP and many times since but this is the one that shows a different space for the Turkish / Egyptian rapper. He’s been making a name for himself as part of that 66 crew down Melbourne way but flag placed in the ground with this one, Mal’s upscaled bigtime. He gallops on this beat he was born in a saddle, confident and constant in flow and dashing between languages with absolute nonchelance. This lad can evidently hit just as hard in Arabic as he does in English and I’d be hoping that this is the start of more bilingual moments on his records ahead. Shoutout to the early French he dropped on Lancome but we’re not counting that here.
Rinse Ya Rab if you haven’t been doing that already this last month.
Artists you need to know rn
| 1. 1300 |  |
316 |
| 2. Voidhood | |
259 | 3. jamesjamesjames | |
186 | 4. Zan | |
174 |
| 5. Sesame Girl | |
147 |
