Album Review: SpaceGhostPurrp - Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles Of SpaceGhostPurrp

Artist: SpaceGhostPurrp

Album: Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles Of SpaceGhostPurrp

Label: 4AD

Release Date: 6/12/12

In an interview with Rolling Stone, SpaceGhostPurrp compares crafting his debut LP, Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles Of SpaceGhostPurrp to “repairing an old car.” The twenty-one-year-old Miami bred rapper/producer who recently just inked a deal with the indie label 4AD has chosen to touch up what he calls “the best of his old tracks” for the new project and has thrown a handful of fresh material on there as well. For fans hearing SGP for the first time, Mysterious Phonk is a nice introduction to the unique extraterrestrial sound of the Raider Klan leader and A$AP mob associate. However, while pretty much all of the updated songs on the album sound better than the originals, at the end of the day they’re still virtually the same tracks, so fans already familiar with Purrps work shouldn’t expect too many surprises on this one.

While listening to Mysterious Phonk, I came to the conclusion that SpaceGhostPurrp’s sound is so distinct that it deserves it’s own genre – Space Trap. If cats were slanging bricks on mars, this is what they would be bumping while they bagged up their work. The way Purrp combines electronic UFO type noises with dark yet ambient sounds on tracks like “Suck A D*ck 2012” and “Osiris Of The East” is unprecedented and truly displays his innovation as a producer. In fact, the production on Mysterious Phonk is really what makes the album. Songs like “Grind On Me” and “Raider Prayer” were first made nearly two years ago but they still sound ahead of their time thanks to Purrps fantastic futuristic beat crafting skills.

Regarding the lyrics on Mysterious Phonk, you just have to take them for what they are. You won’t find any crazy deep wordplay or witty punchlines on this project, but that doesn’t mean the lyrical content is necessarily boring or stagnant. Case and point is a song called “Black God” originally off of Purrp’s God of Black EP where SGP spits a number of attention grabbing lines including the hook which goes “I got to have the world in my hands / I’m a god I’m no longer a black man.” However, there’s one instance where Purrp’s lyrics are inexcusably lazy and it comes on one of the few new tracks off the album called “Bringing The Phonk.” Purrp repeats the line “Ima keep bringing the Phunk and you n!gg@s can’t stop me” for literally the first minute and a half of the song so by the time he actually gets into his verse you’ll be fiending to push that skip button, that is if you haven’t already done so.

However, what SpaceGhostPurrp lacks in lyrics, he makes up for with assorted styles of delivery and flow. Weather it be his choppy yet smooth delivery on “Grind On Me,” which is reminiscent of the way he spits his verse on A$AP Rocky’s “Purple Swag Part 2” or his gloomy whisper of a flow on “No Evidence,” which is arguably the best cut out of the new ones on the project, it is clear that SPG can have fun mixing up his swag and still have the album keep its cohesiveness.

In the same Rolling Stone interview referenced at the beginning of the review, SpaceGhostPurrp referred to Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles Of SpaceGhostPurrp as a thank you to all his fans who’ve been riding with him since the get go. I don’t know about y’all but if I was a diehard SpaceGhostPurrp fan, I would much rather SGP express his gratitude with a project full of new material rather than an album that primarily consists of revamped old cuts. With that being said, if you’re one of those people who have been down with Purrp for a minute than it would be understandable if you were disappointed with this project. On the contrary if this is your first experience with SGP and his space trap sound, then this is probably the best project for you to start out with as it consists of SpaceGhostPurrps self proclaimed best work from the past couple of years.