One day after the release of a three part interview over at The FADER, the private and willfully elusive Mach-Hommy released his first new record of the year in the form of Notorious Dump Legends: Volume 2, a collaborative album together with Tha God Fahim. The original, released back in 2018, remains an early highlight of the pair’s work together, an album that merged the Fahim’s sage simplicity with Mach-Hommy’s artistic poetry, at times abstract and artistic, at others hard yet humorous. They are a great duo, whose styles and voices fit together with aural perfection, melodic but focused, slick but raw, with their stream-of-conscious rhymes seeming to bring out a rare spark in each other.
The legend of Mach-Hommy continues to grow, creating music regarded as timeless art, with LPs sold as investments (and at investment prices), but his lyrics seem to come from the opposite side of the spectrum. Mach-Hommy’s music isn’t solely about stacking paper and living fly, it’s about his community, growth, intelligence, power, and overcoming poverty’s deep roots. With Notorious Dump Legends: Volume 2 the duo come out swinging, with an urgency and sharp words delivered throughout the ominous opening track, “Pissy Hästens,” a song that feels like a work already in progress. Mach-Hommy and Tha God Fahim rip their respective verses with braggadocios flair from the get-go, weaving together shadowy verses that detach as enunciations flip and waver over backwards drifts of shaky synths and minimalist bass.
From there the record opens to sunnier skies, with the angelic loops of “Bad Hands,” a song focused on rising above (and towering over) the haters, and the tight skittering horns of “From Vailsburg to Vaudeville,” tracing a bit of Mach-Hommy’s history, loaded with movie references and a taste for the big come-up. The two find themselves in straight lounge mode by the time of “N*ggas Sooooo Good,” capturing a celebration of summer time excess and the ability to shine bright against the doubters. It’s a track that resembles beautiful beaches and laid back bliss, the work of two legendary underground MCs with nothing to prove. They keep with that attitude throughout the rapid fire assurance of self found on “Cold Milk,” the psychedelic and dusty punchlines of “Olajuwon,” and the steely hip-hop-at-it’s-best essence of “Everybody (Source Codes),” a song that unravels to find Mach-Hommy so glued into his flow that even as the beats fades out, we’re graced with an a cappella that twists between esoteric and philosophical.