- Fractal bars and ambient trap form a triumph of a mixtape.
- The dawn of the one-minute rap song seemed inevitable in the post-Vine era, and the snob in me has been dreading its arrival. A minute wouldn't be enough for an idea to fully flesh out, for a beat to breathe. Liberty City, the debut album from Yorkshire-bred rapper Voldy Moyo, leaves me with egg on my face. Dissecting this album was like befriending a Pokémon: unpredictable yet extremely rewarding. Voldy Moyo plays by his own rules and does so unapologetically.
Voldy has been hailed as the UK's answer to the likes of Earl Sweatshirt and frequent collaborator MIKE. Just like his musical cousins, the vocals on Liberty City have a homemade, lo-fi quality to them, but in Voldy's world they decorate dense metropolitan soundscapes. Wispy synths chirp away, filling the tape with the familiar ambience of old arcade games. Generally, his production is a disjointed yet smooth take on trap music.
Liberty City is a scrapbook of thoughts and feelings, intimate yet still closed off to the world. The lack of collabs makes each track feel even more like a randomly selected page from his journal. Voldy goes from being icy and decisive on the erratic "Sinning" to vulnerable and wide-eyed a minute later on the strikingly gorgeous title track. "Cause I cry don't mean I'm peaceful," he warns on the former, succinctly summing up his complex duality. The recurring mystique is effortless. "I don't even know what I'm saying," he mumbles on the opener, "You Know," often stopping himself halfway through a bar like he's reconsidering his truths as he's saying them. When he turns up the energy it feels natural. "Cry" is a tape highlight and a whirlwind of a banger. "This burned out city never changed me or nothing I do," he boasts.
Knowing yourself amid the relentless push and pull of city life can be an uphill battle. Voldy Moyo bosses it on Liberty City. When all is said and done, the tape turns out to be the best work yet from an artist with a seemingly bottomless well of introspection and ideas that defy expectation.
Tracklist01. You Know
02. Cry
03. Seems 2 Fade
04. Eyes
05. I'm Gone
06. Whatever
07. Sinning
08. Liberty City
09. Heart Won't
10. Paper Planes