Marc Adams
Dead Poet 2: Season 2
(self-released)
Marc Adams came onto my radar via his recent collaboration with Kogan Dumb on the track “Oscar.” Little did I know that Adams had just dropped the trap-heavy “Dead Poet 2: Season 2” at the very tail end of 2014. What Adams offers is a traditional kind of dirty south hip-hop, a narrative style that focuses on personal experience and the struggles of life. There is a grittiness to the beats here that underscore the vibe, paralleled by a lyrical style that is often deft and agile. Still, there is a cold apathy on tracks like “Narnia” that boldly rail against caring, while demanding respect, which makes for a weird contradiction. You can tell there is a nascent cleverness here, albeit one cloaked in the tropes of the genre, which in this case seems like a pitfall. —Syd Bishop