Hi, everyone. Onthony Uptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Backxwash album, Only Dust Remains.

New album here from Canadian rapper and producer, Backxwash. We are now five albums into the Backxwash catalog, and her growth as an artist has been pretty amazing to watch. Certainly one of the most unique hip hop artists operating today. A lot of ink has been spilled up to this point about exactly that, much of which has centered around her African roots, her trans identity, as well as her spirituality, all of which is certainly valid to focus on, especially since those parts of her life play a central role in her lyrics, resulting in a lot of themes of fear, isolation, self-loathing, damnation, and the occult.

All of this has been fuel for some pretty dark albums so far, with tracks that bring together elements of hip hop, metal music, industrial, too. However, her last record, His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are All Suffering, ended in a really surprising way with a closing track that from Backxwash felt like, comparatively speaking, with all of her other material, we were getting a glimmer of hope.

With the instrumental on this track, rather than featuring harsh riffs and walls of noise, we're getting soaring string samples and soul chops, with the lyrics giving a more tender, softer, more vulnerable side of herself. And this clouds parting moment, if you will, was refreshing to hear, not only because it was good, but it just teased toward an unexplored versatility that made Backxwash worth keeping tabs on for whenever she would drop her next record.

Now with this new LP, I feel like we're hearing more of those different sides of her that we caught just a tiny, teensy-weensy bit of on the last record. And that is especially the case for the production side of this LP.

Take the looped chants and hand percussion on the opening track, for example, which have a very primal feel. Obviously not as grim or heavy or as punishing as many past Backxwash instrumentals, but there's still an intense eeriness to it, especially when the bass and keys start to creep in. Plus, this is all bolstered by many lyrical references to demons and not being saved. And this idea of being forsaken and being misunderstood for years now has been a consistent theme on many backwash tracks. But I would say that angle most definitely reaches a peak of intensity here with these yelpy flow switches and Backxwash's delivery getting more and more unhinged as the song progresses. In the latter half of the track, too, these stunning choral vocal samples reveal themselves as well.

And the whole track ends up being really the most layered-up and grandiose opener to any Backxwash record so far. There's also a larger sense of self-awareness on this track as well. Many Backxwash albums in the past have seen her wallowing in some pretty dark feelings. But on this record instead, she's wrestling with validating her own sorrows and woes while simultaneously coming to grips with a world that increasingly seems like it's going to hell, as at a few points on this album, but specifically on this track, she is not shy about mentioning the ongoing genocide in Palestine right now.

We have another killer beat on the record with the song "Wake Up". You have booming rock drums on this track, stuttering vocal samples, some dramatic piano chords, too. Later, some building sinister horns that honestly sound like a portal to hell is opened up and demons are just flying out of it, apprehending people and dragging them down to hell. Lyrically, the self-loathing on this track is crazy. Backxwash depicts herself really being overtaken by depression, rotting. But eventually on the back end of the song, finding happiness in the little things and just scraping to just discover ways to want to carry on. So yeah, the track does start in a very dire place, but it is encouraging to see it finish off in a way to where she is just refusing to go quietly directly into the night.

The following "Undesirable" is another surprise on the record, instrumentally. We have a lot of very plucky vocal and melody samples throughout this track that feel like some esoteric sample source that Kanye would have packed in one of his first two records or something. And for some reason, when the bass and drums and airy keys come in, the track sounds more like the background music you would hear in some Super Nintendo era RPG, or at least that's the connection it's making for me. It works really well with the tone of her voice, especially with how much self searching is going on here.

We see Backxwash critiquing herself in a way to where it's just like an out-of-body experience as she begins to, in her own way, rethink a lot of the angry and vicious lyrics that were on her past records and thinking about how all of that reflected on her or even impact loved ones. We see these closing refrains on the track of "grow the fuck up, grow the fuck up," which makes me lean into this song being somehow about maturity and just learning or moving on from past trauma responses to give yourself a new lease on life. So it really does feel like things come full circle a bit on this track, given a lot of the content of past records.

We also have the chillingly beautiful "9th Heaven", where the vocal samples go absolutely crazy. Also, they're somehow giving off the instrumental classic Kanye vibes again, in my opinion, or maybe even Common to a degree. There's just something about the vocal samples, the drums, the pianos that feels very Chicago. Meanwhile, on the track, lyrically, we see Backxwash in a place where she's feeling just more self-assured of her direction of who she is, where she wants to go in life. She's still, of course, processing some doomed feelings as well as some destructive temptations, which makes the track feel thoughtful and balanced because moving in a new way and improving your life doesn't mean that these bad things are going to go away completely or that they disappear. Existing in a more functional way just means finding ways to work past them and through them.

The following "Dissociation" is a in collaboration with Chloe Hotline, and like many past Backxwash songs, the production on this track sees the song enveloped in all of these very noisy and dense walls of instrumentation. But in the case of this song, rather than a metal riff or some industrial heaviness, we have what sounds like very sunny shoegaze guitars, autotuned chorus vocals as well. The whole tone of the track is surprisingly heavenly. I would say the one thing that stands out about it, and maybe not the best way is that Backwash comes at this track with much the same flow and delivery that she puts on nearly every other song here. Maybe something lighter would have been more appropriate for a song that has this tone and texture to it.

We do move on from here into a pretty strong final leg on the record. "History of Violence" is really a culmination of all of her thoughts about the state of the world currently: war, greed, power dynamics, fascism, bigotry, and how her own personal feelings and world fit into all of that. Instrumentally, we have another grandiose moment on this LP with some musical passages that feel lifted right out of the Kanye 808s era, especially when those wintery keys come in. Meanwhile, lyrically, we get these deep biblical themes throughout the track, too. It's a track that, again, goes headfirst into the darkness that is before her in terms of the state of the world. But in a true reflection of her spirituality, she does, I guess, in a way, hope to find some reprieve in the afterlife.

Instrumentally, "Stairway to Heaven" is completely giving old-school Pink Floyd vibes with the guitar solos and airy keys. And the whole track, lyrically, is a dramatic meditation on death, not only accepting it, the idea of it. It's not a track about wanting to die, mind you. It's more of a series of thoughts on existentialism and what you leave behind when you pass away, all of which is tied up in a very powerful spoken word bridge in the second half of the track.

All of this is bolstered by the "Love After Death" interlude. And then I think the major themes of the album are tied up incredibly well in the closing track, which actually gives the closer to Backxwash's last album a run for its money, in terms of just how light and positive and hopeful and self-affirming it is. This is the brightest and most positive finish of any Backxwash record so far, and the most bright and positive progression of any Backxwash album so far, interestingly.

It really is a chameleon-type album in terms of just how dark it starts and how gradually it warms up as it nears its finish and just completes the thought, artistically speaking, in a way to where it just makes the album title make sense. Not to mention the fact that the instrumental on this track is just incredible with all the big harmonious vocal layers and the grandiose refrains going on. It's just a big jubilee-type moment that I did not really see coming, even though, honestly, it was the last track on the previous album that had me thinking like, man, it would be crazy if she took things into a weirdly positive direction. It seemed like we're going in that direction, that all of this art and music up until this point was a process of working through all this stuff, almost like a therapeutic thing. We're gradually growing and getting better and learning from those past traumas that I was talking about earlier.

But yeah, what a progression, what an evolution, and what an impressive series of beats and flows and verses to attach to all of it. A few tracks in the tracklist pale in comparison to others, and for such a grand progression of emotion, the record and its tracklist are surprisingly trim and blunt at just 10 songs with a couple of transitional moments thrown in here and there.

But still, at the end of the day, very creative and impressive album that honestly, I think is Backxwash's most mindblowing so far, which is why I'm feeling a strong 8 to a light 9 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Backxwash, Forever.