Hip-hop insiders say the genre’s future’s dimming amid the weight of MCs just looking to cash in on the machine. Enola-based Apollo’s Sun’s doing his best to fix that, with his latest EP, “Rust.”
Sun eschews the typical vagaries of the hip-hop realm, instead looking to tackle a gamut of issues head on, backed by his flow and the stutter step of the beats that lock-step through the eight tracks of the album. Sex, society, class structure, gender roles, addiction; you name it and Enola’s favorite wordsmith swings for the fences. And that at-bat’s always with the hope of such noted pop/rock songwriters Chris Martin and Adam Duritz, of Coldplay and Counting Crows fame, respectively.
That’s right, the man’s not afraid to cross the aisle in a musical sense. And that dipping into other pools allows him to infuse his music with the aspirations often lacking in most hip-hop and rap. Take, for example, the opening track, “IV,” a meditation on the judgmental nature of humanity. Starting off like an old-time gospel jam with a melancholy piano hook before the regimented beat kicks in, Sun straps it down with a chorus that acknowledges the drudgery that is life, while looking for that one last ounce of hope: “One step in the right direction/two steps, but it’s life and I question/everything that these two eyes see/so, doctor, please bleed hope into the IV.”
Optimism aside, the issues Sun illuminates all assume a new urgency, in spite of his relaxed delivery. Throughout the EP, the man always sounds deliberate, never rushed. Sometimes, it seems as though the beat might roll right over Sun, but he always manages to get to where he’s going in his own due time.
And those beats are kept simple but effective; a kick, a snare, some other added effects for good measure. But that simplicity belies the infectious nature of the rhythms. You won’t even realize your head’s bobbing along to the beat. But that’s all the better to facilitate Apollo’s Sun’s message getting stuck and bouncing around inside your skull.
Maybe, just maybe, it’ll stick. Just like rust.
