Khalil Nova - 808s of Death [REVIEW]
~by Maxwell Cavaseno
As 2012′s dawn peeks from over the hills of yesteryear, more new young rappers are poking their head out to bask in the sunlight. More than a few have managed to take their influences and spin them in ways that outsiders would find difficult to trace. One of them is Khalil Nova, a young man in his early 20′s from Atlanta. Like Tyler, The Creator and Spaceghostpurrp before him, he’s a producer with an eclectic style which looms over his vulnerable personality. A personality which is is embodied by the struggle within last year’s “808′s Of Death”.
It’s easy to see why Danny Brown declared “Khalil Nove got next!” While more and more bedroom rapper/producers are popping up out of the woodwork at an alarming rate, few of them have the immediacy in their production styles to stand out and arrest your attention. But on opener “Cloud Mover”, Khalil seduces the listener with a haze of soap-opera strings, low thudding bass, and melodies meant to pull at heartstrings. Throughout the tape, his sounds form a confusing array of realms to dwell in: whether on the murky sitar-tinged plod of “Combo”, the eski/R&B hybrid of “Freezer Bhudd” to the lo-fi could’ve-been-a-malnourished-Zomby-tune of “Internet Muzik” and the Juicy J gone cybernetic grind of “The Ultimate Track”. Khalil manages to merge the sounds of video-game bleeps from bits 8 to 32 with the bombast of modern trap production.
