Digital Diamonds by Mike Digi

Digital Diamonds is as much a sequel to North Carolina producer Mike Digi’s first album Kindred Binge as it is a tour de force of hip-hop excellence in general. The beats here remain soulful, but there’s so much more to this record than nostalgia-fueled yearning and referential worldbuilding. For another 15 songs, Mike Digi makes a very convincing argument that he’s one of the genre’s best curators of sound.

The earliest example of this on Digital Diamonds is ‘A Real Occasion’, the urgency with which the album’s proper song it titled matched perfectly by an incredibly satisfying drum loop and a cheerful melody. This is exactly the kind of song that a producer should kick their project off with, it’s a wonderful appetiser that leaves listeners salivating for more. The jazzy undertones of ‘Diamond Like Recollection’ certainly scratch that itch, an unmistakable groove flourishing beneath the pining of the primary vocal sample. I honestly think that this single song evokes a greater range of emotion than most beat makers are able to accomplish across an entire album.

‘Sun From Back East’ is more subdued instrumentally, but the samples give it an unnerving tone. Mike’s drums often feel like metaphors for the mechanical nature of everyday life, and nowhere else on the album does this reading feel more appropriate. ‘Diamond Bullet’ is as its name suggests much more of a show of force, everything about this one feels heavier and more intense. There’s a thick layer of sound to the production that makes the keys seem intrinsically aligned with the drums in an almost symbiotic way, the entire thing is completely hypnotising.

Late album tracklist highlights include ‘Straight Jimi Hendrix’n _ The Come Down’, which really does sound like a slow descent from a blissful high into a state that I could only describe as psychologically ruinous, ‘Blood Sacrament’, which isn’t really horror-tinged as the name but is suitably droning and sinister, and ‘Lost in a Maze’ where abruptly cut vocal surface like lost souls swimming in an endless void. There appears to be a pretty philosophical edge to this album that may require more reading, much of it to me feels like the sound of a human lost in an unfamiliar place and clinging to the last remnants of their humanity to maintain sanity.

The raps are great here, too. Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon is brilliant as always on ‘Had To Switch It Up’ (probably his most normal song title in some time), and JayPluss and Big Kahuna put in serious work on the incredibly hard ‘100 Grand’. Overall, the diversity presented on this album is astounding, and both musically and thematically this is a hugely successful expansion on an already quality formula

MIKE_DIGI LIVES IN A CAVERN AND STUDIES
PHONOMETRICS, HE IS AN ADRIFT BOHEMIAN FROM A NEBULA NOWHERE CLOSE