Right at the beginning of my first semester of college, OutKast released Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Before midterm exams, pretty much everyone I knew had either bought or burned the double CD set. One astute friend took one listen to the mostly instrumental intro on the Speakerboxxx disc and shared this thought: “Damn! If they’re going to use a beat that nice just for the intro, what is the rest of this thing going to be like?”
I get a similar kind of feeling putting on Resplendent, the new collaborative EP by Negro Justice and Gee Slab. The four short-and-sweet tracks don’t really give the pair space to do much more than set the scene, but it’s a story you want to hear more of. In the tense and grooving opener “No Introduction,” Justice takes a sobering look at what it’s like being forced between a rock and a hard place, as he raps, “Is jail better than chalk residue outlining my flesh?”
Throughout the record, both MCs take stock of where they are and where they want to go. With charismatic confidence, they reel off athletic bars that do flips around the pitch-perfect beats; Burm produced three, and Cal Cuttah produced the remaining one. It feels like the pair have this partnership on lock, as reflected in a choice rhyme from Slab in "Minnesota,” the closing track from the EP (which also features Chan Tate): “This rap game is just an intersection / I’m just riding through it till I see the exit.” Here’s hoping that this release is just a taste of something much bigger to come from the dynamic duo.
Grab the EP (with its fantastic illuminated-manuscript-style art) via the Bandcamp embed below. Keep up with the social media of Justice (Twitter, Facebook) and Slab (Twitter, Instagram) to hear what they do next.
