For the tunes, today I bring you GodBodyWati’s debut album Midnight Madina,which has been two years in the making (according to The Fader). He comes to us by way of Brooklyn (as well as East Flatbush and Crown Heights) and is a member of the 1160 collective. He underwent a name change from Wati Heru to the current GodBodyWati a little while back, but is still very much underground. This was the first I had heard of Wati, but for such an unknown (only one track over 3,000 plays on SoundCloud as of right now) he delivered on his debut. As for the title of the project, Wati hasn’t done many interviews lately, but Google is telling me Madina is an Indian restaurant in Brooklyn. Make your own assumptions.
Stylistically, Wati seems to take his cues from everywhere. Most New York rappers are proud NYCers and often honor the styles of their hip-hop predecessors, but Wati doesn’t seem overly preoccupied with the sounds of the past. There are traces of the expected boom-bap on the project, but it’s not overpowering. This album is something of a chameleon; the sound and vibe of the project shifts every two or three songs. Opener “Rudeboy” introduces us to Wati’s wheelhouse; measured, deliberate raps that flow cleanly over low-key production from Kashaka and Kemal (who produce/co-produce all but one of the album’s tracks) that vibrates and snaps along as Wati ponders his upbringing and where he’s at now. “Youth Dem” is in the same lane, but more brings boom-bapish elements into play and is a gentle nod to the New York of old. Still, it’s an evil little beat and Wati is trying to talk a young lady into leaving her boyfriend for him throughout the track before getting in a heated argument during the outro.
The vibe changes on “Evil.” Lord Plawz’s beat is a barely controlled flurry of bass hits and drums as Wati raps, predictably, about the evils associated with his lifestyle. His voice is higher and louder here as he raps with elevated intensity. Wati carries this approach and general subject matter into “4 A.M.; Demons.” The rapping is even more ferocious, but the beat isn’t as exciting (though the howling and guitar chords on the chorus are, uh, interesting). The “Demons” part of the track is one of the best moments on the album; the beat is stripped to the bones as Wati harmonizes nicely with an assist from autotune and accompanied by some female vocals. “Miccey” brings the intensity back down and features my favorite beat on the project. The track purposefully bumps along with various bells sounds hypnotically punctuating each bass hit and a synth that almost sounds like it’s chanting along with the beat. The rapping registers somewhere between the two intensities we’ve seen up to this point, but the content consists mostly of lazy rap tropes and clumsy Knicks metaphors. I cannot for the life of me figure out which of the features is rapping and which is doing the autotuned singing, but the rapper does a nice job and the singing adds nothing to the track.
Unfortunately, that studio session must have stuck with Wati because he spends the next three tracks doing some truly awful autotune singing over beats that aren’t good enough to distract us or save the songs. I keep waiting for the beat to shift on “Slow Wine” and kick the song into gear, but it stays in the same register for two-and-a-half minutes as Wati tries and fails to make sexual music. “Water Is Wet” is basically the same thing (with bad swimming metaphors this time) with a duller beat and more autotune. “Get Off” is a weird (in a bad way) electronic beat with a terrible chorus and no redeeming qualities whatsoever, complete with an annoying voicemail intro and outro. Having “Bounce on the dick” looped behind the chorus was a disturbingly poor creative decision.
Luckily, Wati has two songs to redeem himself. “Til Death…The Last Resort” brings Wati back to his low-register raps as he talks about breaking it off with a significant other. There’s some nice imagery in the chorus that proffer some implications about how the breakup went down, and the beat somehow smoothly incorporates actual humming. It’s a pretty subtle beat that allows the raps take center stage, yet the simple addition of the humming makes this track a standout. The closer “Fucc It; We Ain’t Gettin Younger” is another chill boom-bap beat with soothing guitar chords as accompaniment. Wati is still rapping in his favored low voice, but he draws the lines out and half-sings with just a hint of autotune. It’s very laid back and serves nicely as the final course.
Debut albums for underground rappers can be tricky; you absolutely need to maintain a solid connection with your existing fanbase while still providing a sound or song that could break through to a wider audience. This is probably why Wati covered so much sonic ground on this project, and it led to both the highlights and downfalls of this album. The three song stretch that attempt to channel contemporary R&B are unequivocal failures, but Wati doesn’t need to be in that lane to carve out a successful career. Tracks one, two, five, nine and ten were all very strong, and that’s where Wati will be successful. He reminds me a lot of Jazz Cartier on tracks three and four and can really rap his ass off, but I think he needs better production to make waves with that particular sound. In any case, Wati’s at his best when he can flow quietly but deliberately over a quirky, subtle beat. Unfortunately, he’s got a lot of company in that regard. Still, Midnight Madina was a great debut because Wati explored as much of his range as he could. He can now use the critical responses as indicators of which style generates the best response. It will be up to GodBodyWati to use the information gathered from the response to his debut to refine his craft.