Chickenwire

Lukah raps his ass off over minimal soul wrenching loops. Heavy southern spittage without the veil of bombast production. (PTP) Lukah’s delivery is well-enunciated and confident, with quip after quip sliding off of his silver tongue over a half-hour of hook-less verses, as fluid and loose as backseat freestyles. “Bounce,” according to DJ Squeeky, is a necessary component of the Memphis rap sound, which by now has come to be acknowledged as the precursor to many of hip-hop’s hottest trends. Chickenwire contains no bounce. Some tracks betray their R&B samples in clipped slivers, but most are wordless, tangled loops. This tape is the sort of thing you can play all the way through while puffing a backwoods on a porch in the sweltering, humid heat, but the MC never fails to remind you: don’t let your guard down. (Tiny Mixtapes) Chickenwire, Lukah’s 17-track LP, is an outlier within rap today. His hardnosed, outside-voice cadence plays well over hallucinogenic soul, provided in large part by Cities Aviv, a fellow Memphis outsider. Lukah’s hunger on wax is both evident and enticing. (Bodye)