Busdriver hasn’t come to break your neck, butPerfect Hairis an unsettling sight. The LA rapper is a cunning wordsmith and, by pairing a verbose attack with icy glitch-scapes and mutated boom-bap beats, Driver succeeds at inducing nausea.

Essentially, Perfect Hair reflects on an age in which the entrepreneurial imperative, coupled with sickly celebrity worship, has birthed a population of monstrous individualists. Opener ‘Retirement Ode’ points the knife inwards, employing the hook, “You never would admit how sick I’ve become,” amid ironic jabs at music industry excess.

‘Ego Death’ sees Busdriver battling Aesop Rock and Danny Brown for dizziest verse of the year. Driver continues to make acerbic comments on the prevalent 21st century disease, stating “Downtime is never met with an overjoyed grin / Sleep and death have always been conjoined twins”. Meanwhile, Brown brings the macho vulgarity, as well as referencing a selection of present-context pop culture trifles. As the ego-pumping progresses, each body bloats towards certain explosion.

Perfect Hair piles up evidence to reveal we’re already living in dystopia. It reaches the point where colonising the moon begins to sound like a feasible alternative.

3.5/5.

Perfect Hairis out now through Big Dada /Inertia.

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