Written by Elijah P.
“Basic” is Shanti Dope’s statement to rap’s mega complex. Right off the bat, he finds it easy to course through 5-tracks showing that he’s the best. The young Caviteño has barely even reached his creative peak.
Shanti’s career as a rapper so far has been a mix of triumph and controversy: PDEA tags “Amatz” as a negative influence towards his audiences; Gloc-9 passes the torch shortly after signing a deal with Universal Records; Disney+ adds the aforementioned track in their hit series Falcon and the Winter Soldier; and clearing his name from being affiliated with the notorious Miguelito Malakas.
The de facto leader of Young God Recordz first started out from playing at small rooftop bars in Bacoor. Now he has the whole world on his hands. For this EP however, he’s going back to his roots. “Basic” was an assemblage of his cohorts; he givesthe spotlight to his closest family in his own label — minus Pricetagg Official and Hero who have their own respective cliques to handle in the competition.
He maximized his resources for this EP, it’s evident comparing this from his previous full-length outing as a rookie back in his self-titled debut release – a project where we witnessed his first stumble as a rapper. It had tracks that expressed his juvenility and impulses, but neither of those subject matter proved a checkmate in the game. In “Basic”, there’s maturity, solid schemes, and a mission.
All the tracks were mapped out, Shanti being the master at his element: tracklist feels more compact but packed with punchlines, guest features feel at home, and most importantly, Shanti Dope proves time and time again that he isn’t just a rapper with a double-time flow, he’s more than that. Shanti has a skillset almost no one can match at his age and current status.
In the title track “Basic”, he and fellow Cavite partner Mhot go back and forth at a boom bap beat, all the while playing around with different voice pitches by the latter half, which calls for an experimental phase in Shanti’s music. The different voices of Shanti possess a different tone in his arsenal, wherein his untouchable hook writing can go very well together with his affinity for pitching his vocals differently in each track; The best example of this stylistic choice are either tracks like “Tabi” or “Loaded” – the former takes a form of a tamed conscience while the latter describes the life and times of a desperado at the dead of night.
“Basic” collects one of Shanti’s best tracks in recent memory. The instrumentals put a good spin to the solo rapper’s career as he continues to push himself further as an individual with a generation behind him and raise the standard of rap altogether.
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