Guns (Reissue) (Vinyl LP, Gold Splatter)

Every time a shooting makes the news talking heads pop up in small boxes and make loud arguments about how we shouldn’t rush to politicize what just happened. After all, the heads argue, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But how true is that? Are the tools we use simply tools, innocuous until we give them meaning? Or are the things we surround ourselves with –– the things in our arsenal –– begging to be weaponized, for good or for evil? Guns, the new album from the critically acclaimed rapper and producer Quelle Chris, is a careful study of all these questions, an urgent record for urgent times.

“Guns is an arsenal of both sounds, styles, and subjects, Quelle says, taking a thorough look at “the words we say, what we fear, how we love, how we live, what we ingest, what we believe in, who we idolize, shit like that.” To this end, the New York by-way-of Detroit savant attacks his topics from multiple angles: there’s the jagged, minimal “Obamacare,” which plays like a confrontation, but there’s also “Wild Minks,” where Quelle and the enigmatic New Jersey rapper Mach-Hommy spin silk out of the softest textures in their parents’ record collections. In the service of examining big ideas with grave consequences, we get to hear a master technician deploying every piece of ammo he has.

Tracklist

1. Spray and Pray 
2. Guns 
3. Color of the Day
4. Mind Ya Bidness 
5. It’s the Law (Farewell Goodbye Addio, Uncle Tom) (Feat Ugly Boy Modeling) 
6. Wild Minks (Feat. Mach Hommy)
7. Box of Wheaties V2 (Feat. Denmark Vessey)
8. PSA Drugfest 2003_sleeveless Minks
9. Sunday Mass (Feat. Bilal Salaam)
10. Straight Shot (Feat Cavalier, Bilal Salaam, Eldar Djangirov, & James Acaster) 
11. Obamacare 
12. You, Me & Nobody Else (Feat Jonathan Hoard, Jean Grae) 
13. Wyrm