Local Review: Knwday – re-up

Knwday
re-up
Self-Released
Street: 07.03
Knwday = The Alchemist + J Dilla (just a bit of Madlib)

My first review for SLUG when I was an intern was a track by Knwday (formerly madebyok!) featuring blkswan back in early January of this year. A lot of the connections I made back then to Knwday’s influences (as well as blkswan’s) will be pretty similar to what I have to say about Knwday’s first full-length project re-up. Casual, laid-back and low-key are all words that quickly come to mind when hearing the SLC producer’s signature beats, which masterfully replicate that era of R&B-heavy hip-hop mixed with the more contemporary lo-fi sounds of the last decade. 

I hear a lot—I mean a lot—of J Dilla in Knwday’s work and even predict that he holds Donuts very close to his heart (like I do). Knwday impressively captures the way J Dilla used to blend soul and R&B samples with a beat so perfectly that it felt like a lucid dream. The best part (and in some ways the worst) of that is that I find myself anticipating the lyrics starting. Maybe this is my fault, as I don’t listen to just hip-hop beats in my free time nor have dived too deep into that world, so I am conditioned to expect a lyricist in every song. I can say that listening to re-up has opened my tastes up to this subgenre, though, and I am currently digging for more. That’s not to say I don’t want someone on Knwday’s beats, but I’m not sure if that’s his ultimate goal. 

There can be a one-sided view of producers and rappers, often as if producers “help” a rapper sound good or simply just provide a good beat for a track. You can see it in other types of collaborations within the genre. When Jay-Z and Kanye West teamed up on Watch The Throne, listeners heard how each of them influenced each other’s lyrics, sound and approach, but when The Alchemist teamed up with Earl Sweatshirt on Voir Dire, much of what you heard was how good Earl sounded on an Alchemist beat. This perspective doesn’t value the contributions of the producer highly enough. Sometimes there’s a slight hierarchy between the rapper and the producer, evidence for which can be seen in the lyrics to Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline” where he responded to Dr. Dre’s diss on “Message to B.A.”: “Ay yo Dre, stick to producing /  Calling me Arnold but you been-a-dick”. These are incomplete thoughts, but they came from listening to re-up as I began to think more deeply about a project like this.

When I chatted with Knwday about the project before I heard it, he referred to it as “Depressed GTA stripper-type beats,” and honestly, it’s hard to disagree. Baked into this project is a type of nostalgia that reminds me of the fifth-generation gaming consoles like the PS1 and Nintendo 64. I can’t point to anything concrete about it, but I swear if you were born in the mid to late-‘90s, you’ll get it. In many ways, Knwday’s tracks are open canvases for other musicians or lyricists to hop onto and show how strong his aesthetic is. In the “liner notes” of this album on Bandcamp, he writes, “this a compilation of drops from my old artist name. if i die, this alone makes me proud.” I find this very sweet; to me, it reads like the note you’d find in a dug-up time capsule filled with compressed memories. Since his rebrand, Knwday has dropped two EPs of only loops, which are also great and show a lot of promise for potential collaboration (which those of you reading this should consider doing). I look forward to more of his projects and seeing how his sound shifts and evolves. –wphughes 

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