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Imagine a Cenobyte raised on MF DOOM and Wu-Tang Clan, and you’ve got something approximating a rapper like Fatboi Sharif. The rage-y corners of Atlanta rap use St Peter’s crosses and pentagrams to gesture at provocation, much in the same way an LV logo symbolizes luxury until you look closer and realize the bag is counterfeit. Sharif doesn’t just steer clear of this cheap platitudes, he’s not even speaking the same language. His lyrics are more indebted to Lovecraft than Young Thug, as much an exorcism of deep trauma as a summoning for something ancient and terrifying to take its place.
If Sharif’s discography is the Book of Revelations — written in exile from the mainland, with furious zeal and no shortage of psychedelic enhancement — Let Me Out, his new album with producer Driveby, is another chapter with similar themes and few curveballs. The guest features are all hits, coming at just the right time in their respective places and bringing the exact energy the record needs, but the standout is easily “Zeitgeistic Psychosomatic Measurements,” featuring Beans.
A member of the avant-garde rap group Antipop Consortium, Beans is a riot on the track, by turns thoughtful and hilarious. “A bird in the hand is worth it to the bird in the air,” he muses, before rapping about turning a lap dance down from an inadequately-endowed stripper, over a beat that sounds like it was ripped from a classic Doom game. His entry sets Fatboi up for a layup, his addled ramblings smelling like brimstone and Fireball whiskey. Who says the apocalypse can’t be fun?
