by Patrick Pilch (@hosewater0)
DEC0N$TRUCT!0N opens on the subway; metal on metal, dense crowds, sickly coughs. A faint arpeggiation floats while Brooklyn artist Maassai lives between a beat dissolving into the A train. “Aight boom” is cramped, on edge. “Just wanted acres and a mule, wow,” she raps, an iPhone alarm cutting like a cortisol spike. “Now we end up on the news/end up on the concrete splattered like juice.” Maassai’s justified paranoia introduces listeners to the rapper’s world displaced. Racism, gentrification, and draconian police tactics in the city’s outer boroughs continue to systemically force families and communities to relocate, but Maassai’s discography shows she isn’t going anywhere.
DEC0N$TRUCT!0N carries the torch of C0N$TRUCT!0N and C0N$TRUCT!0N 002, Maassai’s space-reclaiming tapes celebrating the physical and creative work of black people, black culture, and black art. The EPs work as a conceptual triptych in opposition to the oppressive and exploitative systems in her city, as well as the need to rebuild equitable community frameworks. “Blueprint” interrogates the intrusive gentrifier, a spectator to culture and community. “U want my labor then u gotta pay the fee,” she demands, “ain’t no savior, u hate to see/U a neighbor or police?/take da flavor off the streets/It feel safer when u leave.” It’s an unfortunate, all-too-familiar scene: predominantly white big city transplants “scoring'' cheap rent on new construction homes in impoverished communities only to police their neighbors like the commuter-cops enlisted to protect profit over people.
On their Bandcamp page, Maassai notes DEC0N$TRUCT!0N is an “investigation of the heart” containing unmixed/unmastered songs from the last three years, but these tracks show the rapper’s expert ability to string an ostensibly fractured series into one congruent whole. Closer “play city (outro)” imagines a city extinct, swept out from under her feet by the poisoned rising tides of the Hudson. It’s not too far off considering the recent escalation of climate catastrophes, but Maassai turns the river’s pollution into a reflection of the poisonous world we’ve built on land. We’re trapped, a very relatable sensation for 21st century New Yorkers, and again Maassai feels the walls caving in, but not without considering the prospect of the future. “The ripples in the water remind me that change may be an option/and how it comes may be strange to accept/when the earth is tired of us rearranging its depth/what’s next?”
When the flood turns its tides on society, Maassai sees a chance to start anew. Pressure from the city squeeze is here to stay, and there are already plenty of holes in the boat. Who says rebuilding starts tomorrow? With DEC0N$TRUCT!0N, Maassai asks what rebuilding looks like today.