The guardians of the hip hop realm, Lil Baby and Lil Durk morph into the precursors of state-of-the-art hip hop rhythms in ‘The Voice Of The Heroes’ with rending stories.
Lil Durk is a legend in his own world, having successfully transitioned from his Chicago drilling days to a superstar rapper in a blink of an eye, where he’s featured on tunes with big personalities like Drake and garnered massive Billboard 100 positions. Lil Baby, the voice of a generation that precedes the spark of future nostalgia in hip hop music, has also fought hard for his laurels, achieving one of the highest-selling albums of 2020 with ‘My Turn’ while supporting Black Lives Matter with common brothers and sisters of his community on the streets. Finally collaborating for ‘The Voice of The Heroes,’ the two attempt to demonstrate their talents and create an album that would be declared Platinum in the street hip hop– fortunately they are not short on rending narratives and depicting modern hustles in a positive shade.
Lil Durk, at 28, is only two years older than Lil Baby, but he hails from a whole different period. Durk recorded many of the tracks that would make drill music a hit in Chicago and subsequently national when he was still a teenager in the early 2010s. He bit his teeth did not give up his grind and kept working rather than fading from the pop charts or rap’s artistic cutting edge. Six years after his debut with ‘I’m a Hitta,’ he relocated once more, this time he moved to Atlanta, which had emerged as the undisputed epicenter of the hip-hop business. The other young rapper had finally joined the picture around this time.
The lead record from the platinum album ‘The Voice of The Heroes’, for example, is a letdown. With Durk as a drill icon whose diction is electrifying every time, we hear him and Lil Baby as everyone’s darling rapper, you’d think that they would employ a more energetic and ruthless version of a sob story with a bit more elegance. ‘Medical,’ created by LondonOnDaTrack, witnesses the Atlantan and Chicagoan use their narrative abilities to recount their personal experiences on the streets of America’s most gang-infested cities; the tunes were therapeutic. The hook is entrancing as he croons, “I need medical,” proving that the magic of real instruments hasn’t faded away.
The new song ‘Hats Off (feat. Travis Scott)’ from the album puts down a solid and remarkable foundation for an artist with a definite love and aptitude for the art form, melding ambient soundscapes with lyrical euphoria and long-form melodic story-telling. The phenomenal rappers define their music as “angsty millennial style beats” as a group effort. Perhaps this is the best way to describe their esoteric approach, but there’s a lot more to the sound and experience of this team than the name of the album can convey. Depth and substance are important both poetically and in terms of the emotion and atmosphere that each soundscape conveys.
‘Who I Want’ is an excellent illustration of all of the grind they took on their shoulder. The three-minute composition includes a lot of sonic information, layers and structure, melody, and rap, and it all comes together to create something that seems planned and far greater than its typical time span should allow. The album has met the expectations of their large slew of fans. They have come with eighteen songs filtered with different moods. Elsewhere on the long record, gorgeous voices and a diverse cast of characters contribute to the album’s dynamic and capture your attention; yet, the musicianship alone progresses brilliantly towards the same aim. As the famous song ‘Make It Out’, for example, offers pleasantly unique and ambiently dreamy riffs that work beautifully. At the same time, it clearly fits inside their unique concept. These strands of uniqueness run throughout, with the rappers keeping things diversified in terms of energy and color, but also allowing these familiar splashes of ‘knowing’ that help you stay connected and immersed all the way through. Get the whip-smart album on Spotify right now.
