The purpose of this blog post its to get you to listen to Yaphet, the new album from Philadelphia indie rapper Curly Castro. In most cases, the headline of the post would just be something about how that album exists. But a prospective reader might be more likely to click after seeing lots and lots of other underground rap names in the headline. As it happens, Yaphet opens with a gigantic six-minute posse cut that sounds like the Backwoodz Studioz Avengers assembling, so that's what goes in the headline. It's just how the internet works.
Curly Castro is one half of the duo ShrapKnel, and he's been part of the circle around the Backwoodz label for a long time. He's a larger-than-life figure with a raspy throwback flow and a ton of charisma. Yaphet is his first solo album in five years, and the Milwaukee beatmaker Locust produced the whole thing, going hard on unclearable samples from classic rap and reggae records. I'm on my first listen right now, and I have already caught dozens of X-Men references and one sample of a classic bit from the absurdist battle rapper O-Solo.
Opening track "Black Don’t Crack" crams in tons of instantly recognizable breakbeats, shifting slightly as each of its seven rappers takes a crack at it. The all-star lineup includes New Jersey iconoclast Fatboi Sharif, Columbus Def Jux veteran Blueprint, hungry young Baltimore lion Brian Ennals, Brooklyn-via-Chicago artist SKECH185, Seattle veteran AJ Suede, and label boss billy woods. I only had to look up a couple of those guys, and I'll take that as a win. Hear the track below.
Meanwhile, here's the video for Castro's new single "Railroad Spikes," which may or may not sample the score from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
But I'm really just writing this post so that you'll listen to the whole damn album, so go a head and do that below.
Yaphet is out now on Backwoodz Studioz.
