One for Kels: "I don't like a beat unless it's 14 years old / You might see me in my 14 year old whip / with my… / bumping that 14 year old shit."

Bottomless well, that Kels. The drums on "Standbye" are 90% heard-before-break with some chopped hits snuck on top, double-ups spliced in for fun. Ant's guitar lick sounds like the oft-jacked riff from Yellowman's unspellcheckable "Zungguzungguguzungguzeng" (remember "The P Is Free"?) tapped out, but bluesier, and it gets smudged and soiled with agro soul vocal snips (wailing, slowed down and stretched out, creating some kind of bizarro beatpro universe, like "Is rap even allowed to? Did Ye say they could? Is that a dis?"). The topic: getting stuck in airports, which, in the take-your-belt-off/turn-on-your-laptop era, is like writing a song about blinking, unless you make it some funny/shitty rapper-prejudice thing, which Psalm and Ali don't: "darn." It doesn't matter. The beat doesn't have to tell you that it's on some "New York Shit," and Psalm and Ali work cadence and tone with the precision and charisma we should never have stopped expecting on production like that. Maybe we never did: production like that isn't exactly Tila Tequila these days.

Maybe I'm overreacting, extra sensitive since it feels like my nostalgiamonger is getting catered to/patronized, but I've been listening to that shitty RAM file all morning, and so far it's been a good day. Psalm One's RSE-pressed The Death of Frequent Flyer drops July 18, which makes complaining about a standby wait seem silly.

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