Pray For Haiti

There’s a liquid, surreal feeling that runs through *Pray for Haiti*, a sense of touching solid ground only to leave it just as fast. Between the bars of Newark rapper Mach-Hommy\'s dusty, fragmented beats (many courtesy of the production regulars of Griselda Records), he glimpses thousand-dollar brunches (“Au Revoir”), bloodshed (“Folie Á Deux”), and the ghosts of his ancestors (“Kriminel”) with spectral detachment—not uncaring so much as stoic, the oracle at the outskirts who moves silently through a crowd. He likes it grimy (“Magnum Band,” “Makrel Jaxon”) and isn’t above materialism or punchlines (“Watch out, I ain’t pulling no punches/So real I make Meghan Markle hop out and get the Dutches”), but is, above all, a spiritualist, driven by history (like a lot of his albums, this one is peppered with Haitian Creole), feel, and a quiet ability to turn street rap into meditation. “It’s crazy what y’all can do with some old Polo and Ebonics,” he raps on “The 26th Letter”—a joke because he knows it’s not that simple, and a flex because, for him, it is.

On one of his most ambitious and definitive projects, Mach-Hommy reunites with Westside Gunn and puts on an unforgettable clinic with his razor-sharp bars and an exceptional eye for detail.

After a long string of good if not excellent releases, New York rapper Mach-Hommy's Pray for Haiti finds him at the pinnacle of his talents for lyricism so complex and layered with meaning almost every line requires dissection.

Previously shrouded in mystery and only known to underground hip-hop fans, rapper Mach-Hommy has enjoyed a coming-out party with the release...