AJ Suede seemingly enjoys proving unpredictable. Whether he is making outlandish references to works like Annie, Dick Tracy, and Tenet or transitioning from those playful connections to a dour statement like “Things never change,” he doesn’t like his listener to know what to expect. While other parts of Reoccurring Characterscarry a sonic sense of ruination, the opening lines of Suede’s new collaborative album with producer steel tipped dove set its nerd-rap tone perfectly with its mentions of outer space, “planet dwellers,” and futuristic spaceships. steel tipped dove introduces the LP with chipmunk-soul style horns and light, slightly echoed drums before Suede begins his own world-building with the lines, “Crash landed on a planet that I’ve never seen / Drones greeted me, led the way and said to ‘follow, please.’”
The rest of the opening song, “Automatic Amnesty,” sees Suede discuss feelings of alienation in this new place, a clear mirror of his feelings towards his life. He speaks of backing away from the general population due to his disagreements with their rules and ideas, wanting to escape their “resource harvesting” in an extended reference to Frank Herbert’s Dune and its fictional world of Arrakis.
References are used throughout Reoccurring Characters to ground Suede’s ideas and clarify their meanings. One especially comedic example is towards the end of “Tell Me When to van Gogh” when Suede references Shrek, of all things. “Do Suede have bars? Do ogres have layers?”—the answer to both, as Shrek would prove, is a resounding yes. “Hovercraft Jeep” is crammed with mentions of Jordans, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and even Rocky IV. These layered mentions of pop cultural phenomenons, used frequently by Suede, help to guide the listener towards an understanding of his complicated character, a personality that switches drastically with the mood of each track. There is a certain intimacy in getting to know Suede through the art he chooses to rap about, from the films of Hayao Miyazaki to Lil B’s un-changing profile picture. The large variety of connotations, often—but crucially, not always—comedic, from these references are then associated with Reoccurring Characters, serving as another tool for Suede to use to articulate his complex ideas. Not only does the listener get to feel close to Suede, but the album becomes larger as it draws in ideas from a plethora of sources with its pointed referential rapping.
While doing so, he utilizes a variety of flows, but what is most impressive about his style is the wit of his wordplay. He finds fascinating, unpredictable ways to make his points. On “One Way Ticket,” he disses other artists who try to push boundaries but don’t have the artistic quality to do so. He approaches this simple idea through a brief allegory about wheels: “Many squares try to reinvent the wheel / if the wheel’s made of squares, then the car stands still.” Using complicated pathways to say something powerful and direct makes the album more stylistic and memorable while showcasing Suede’s talent with the pen.
The bold variety in sound makes each track stand out thanks to Backwoodz Studioz’s regular steel tipped dove’s ambitious production. To move from the aforementioned chipmunk-soul of “Automatic Amnesty” to the grim, dreary, and anxiety-inducing beat for “Kluxbusting” is impressive, but steel tipped dove makes these leaps in mood look easy. “Dreads at The Monastery” has an instrumental consisting of light and dreamy female vocals and sleepy drums, which are hypnotic and entrancing. The following track, “Cold Hue,” has a gorgeous, silky saxophone and snappy drum taps with gentle piano backing. If anything is guaranteed about steel tipped dove’s production, it’s beauty.
Even the most hectic and uncomfortable beats on Reoccurring Characters have a certain elegance in their structure. “Continental Drifting” has slightly sleazy acoustic work and elongated synthy strings, contributing to an apocalyptic feel, as if Suede’s planet from the opening track is ending. Suede’s rapping reflects this feeling of doom with the album’s poetic final lines: “When the great flood happens, in the penthouse, clapping / at the people underneath you barely swimming through the traffic.” These ideas, huge in scale, are skillfully captured in a handful of repeated sounds and snappy, to-the-point writing.
The album’s features are also very well curated. PremRock and Fatboi Sharif’s appearances on “One Way Ticket” complement Suede’s verse on the track despite the differences in both their written and vocal approaches. PremRock’s verse, in particular, grabs attention with its faster flow and intelligent lines, which can prove hard to keep up with. His rapping is vivid and intense, describing drug use and distrust of authorities as he “gives pigs nine answers and nine descriptions.” It’s a verse that comes out swinging, working against Suede’s often slower style. Fatboi Sharif’s gravelly vocals meet steel tipped dove’s subtle changes in production. The drums slow down, and the piano becomes more muffled as Sharif’s voice booms through and takes over the track, his words difficult to distinguish as he speaks in bassy abstractions of a “crying lightbulb” and an “eternal nightclub.” His verse is discomforting and strangely delivered, the tone perfectly understood.
Curly Castro of ShrapKnel appears on “Cold Hue” and steals the show. The production is staggeringly beautiful, and Suede’s verse is relaxed as he shows gratitude to his fans for supporting his work. Curly Castro matches this energy, delivering a slowly-paced verse. The harshness of his voice is a stark contrast to the beat’s gentle keys, but the flow and delivery are calm and tender.
Reoccurring Characters is a complex and consistently intriguing album, especially due to its control over its atmosphere. The album oscillates between the bleak sense of an ending world and a much lighter, more playful sound due to Suede’s ability to paint vivid pictures with his words (as well as his numerous, intelligently utilized references) and steel tipped dove’s instrumental virtuosity which sees each track feel fresh and distinct from the others. All the while, the album maintains an emotional cohesion, an odd mood lingering somewhere between doom and the performance of a dancing jester… plus Shrek! The duo both deliver some of their finest work here, promising great potential for future releases as individuals or, one can hope, as a duo once more.
