Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
The song I first heard was called ‘A B-Boy’s Alpha’. I can’t even say the lyrics out loud, because I’ll sound insane! But they’re pretty incredible. This song sounds like the most feminist way you could open a hip hop song, but it’s not preachy and it’s super alpha and aggressive. The production is so beautiful and consistent, it has this icy palette. It’s almost like Bjork’s Vespertine, which is a weird comparison but I got into these records at the same time. So there’s that, and there are two MCs, I think El-P raps on it too, but it has this feeling of a few guys rapping and they’re totally secure with sharing the spotlight with each other. The whole record is super-aggressive and alpha and stereotypically masculine, there’s nothing soft about it at all, but simultaneously they never put women down. I guess sometimes as a woman in the music industry I feel like misogyny sells. There’s a lot of rationalisation of it, particularly by music critics. So when a record is this ferocious but still holds women up, really celebrates women as the power figures, it jumps out at you.