There’s the hardest working man in experimental Black music/Afrofuturistic music today, and there’s RA Washington. He is a prolific rapper, producer, musician, band leader (of the noted genre-agnostic ensemble Mourning [A] BLKstar), and label boss of Cleveland Tapes, where most of the music features him, his sister, singer, musician, producer, and poet Latoya Kent alongside a group of artistic friends. The moment you subscribe to the Cleveland Tapes Bandcamp, you’ll find a collection of albums that belong to them and other artists—proof of exactly how hard of a working artist Washington truly is.
BOXCUTTER, Washington’s latest project, continues his genre-adjacent experimentations but leans more towards sounding like a raw soul album than anything an avant-garde hip-hop producer of your choice produced. Yet even that feels too easily simplified at times. Rather than the project being just soul samples, Washington plays every instrument from synth to drums to guitars. Tracks like “and we knew” sound as if approached like a song born from a jam session. Meanwhile, Washington’s vocals are soft, raw, and inflected with pain and desperation but not robbed of power.
“Fend ghosts” slowly brings in a mix of fuzzed-out blues guitar and swirling synth as Washington muses on the state of living in the country. “Maybe this country is a scam,” he sings under the slow, dissociative waltz. “Records” croons in falsetto with a sense of naked defeat over spare keyboards. “and we knew” may be someone’s patient zero as far as blending R&B and space rock. Synths swirl with a Milky Way disposition over raw, out-of-time piano underneath and in the middle of the action is Washington himself. “Aunt Fran” finds Washington and other band mates—such as Jah Nada and Alive—continuing their experimental streak on BOXCUTTER by shifting into bombastic psychedelic rock mode for what feels like an original album closer at 3:12. If you are patient, around the 16:21 mark, the track reveals a bonus improvisational synth piece.
It’s safe to say that BOXCUTTER will likely appeal to those with tastes that lean more towards the experimental and alternative than those with any traditionally categorized taste. If you enjoy fellow genre-bending renegades Gonjasufi, Dean Blunt, Algiers, and even the legendary singer-songwriter and outsider artist Lonnie Holley then this album is for you. As for the subject matter, this is not soul music that asks what’s going on—it knows, and though the present as presented doesn’t look that salvageable, you always have the healing powers of art to get you through.
