HUBBS’s latest project, Winston Zeddemoore, contains his usual array of intricate wordplay, with bars interlocking like pieces in an astral puzzle.
While Zeddemoore may be named after an everyman who famously signed on to bust ghosts in 1984, the album sees HUBBS bust rhymes instead. There aren’t a ton of features on here, but when they do occur, they’re deployed masterfully. The meditative “Solar Rishi,” produced jointly by HUBBS and M Germ, sees Wilkinsburg’s Shad Ali hop aboard the Zeddemoore Express for a pass-the-rock word collage. Overtop an instrumental that resembles a funk track submerged in quicksand, the two rappers trade thoughts back and forth, rendering obsolete the concept of the discrete verse by switching off every ten seconds or so. The physical qualities of the two rappers’ voices–HUBBS’s pops out over the beat, while Ali’s nestles into it–make for a satisfying contrast (not a perfect analogy, but the interplay is a bit like RZA and Masta Killa), while the lyrics themselves balance abstraction and insight to hypnotic effect. As HUBBS puts it in the track’s refrain, the two are just “spending time ’til the truth sticks,” so listen closely.
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