Send "Das Racist " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Das Racist always come off as being at least two steps ahead of whomever they're addressing on or off record, which goes a long way toward explaining what made their 2010 mixtapes, Sit Down, Man and Shut Up, Dude, so inexhaustibly fresh and frankly pretty fucking intimidating to encounter as a critic. A style so reliant on self-reference and continuity doesn't appear to leave much to coincidence, so I'm wondering what to make of my suspicions regarding a line that appeared on both of their completely free mixtapes, but not their first commercially available release: "You should probably buy it." This isn't wholly unexpected-- Heems, Kool AD, and Dapwell can appear unimpressed to a fault, and Relax draws from a rich tradition of antisocial reactions to newfound fame: at times, it's a sour demystification that seeks to define its own backlash à la De La Soul Is Dead, at others a simplified CliffsNotes for people still playing catch up, and a lot of times it simply wants to be Bazooka Tooth. But even as jaded as they sound toward show promoters, industry types, your band, and white dudes on the internet, Relax is a frustrating, occasionally thrilling record that saves its most pervasive indifference for a far more troubling target: itself.Though they've had plenty of laughs at backpacker indie rap's expense, Relax comes alive whenever it strives for an honorary Def Jux badge. El-P and Danny Brown are the most notable appearances, and what's initially jarring is how much the otherwise impermeable Das Racist universe accommodates a sound that caters more toward its guests' respective dystopian styles, forsaking the weeded-out levity of Sit Down and Shut Up for industrial grind fueled by cheap coke and battery acid. At the outset, they keep up as the brittle title track finds Heems adopting a rawer style to spit a bracing, strikingly plainspoken verse about his upbringing. Meanwhile, "Michael Jackson" pays homage to the Chinese fire drill productions of Heatmakerz and AraabMuzik, its brainwashing hook reminiscent of "Dipset (Santana's Town)"'s infamous "like Kurt Cobain was here!" in terms of chantable celebrity nonsense. When Relax revisits this sort of bludgeoning approach ("Selena", "Punjabi Song"), you sense the incomplete framework of a record meant to be aesthetically unified and audience-dividing: "Michael Jackson" and the other initially punishing tracks shuttle from "I absolutely cannot stand this song" to "I absolutely cannot get this song out of my head" in about the same amount of time "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" did....full text |
| Spin |
| We join Das Racist in the Hey, These Guys Are Actually Really Good phase of their inexplicable career. The viral goof "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" begat two shockingly great 2010 mixtapes full of sly, hilarious rap chicanery -- part Cheech and Chong, part Smif-n-Wessun, part Sartre and de Beauvoir. With Relax, they find out if you'll pay for it. A motley crew of producers (Diplo, El-P, Rostam from Vampire Weekend, Drake affiliate Francis Farewell Starlite, one of the dudes from Yeasayer) serves up shinier, harder, louder, thornier beats, and our heroes occasionally respond in kind: "Yeah, I'm fuckin' great at rapping!" snarls Himanshu Suri to conclude a remarkably gnarly verse on the Mortal Kombat–goes-Bollywood banger "Michael Jackson." It's still unclear how seriously you're supposed to take these people, very much by design. The synth-pop jam "Booty in the Air" is essentially Das Racist spoofing Lupe Fiasco spoofing mainstream rap; "Happy Rappy" is a quick, thrilling blast of Diplo minimalism and lyrical absurdity (they start by counting to 20); reprised early Internet cut "Rainbow in the Dark" is a welcome oasis of expertly half-assed calm amid the newfound clamor. Overall theme: Stop trying to figure this out. "You can ask what it do / Or you can act like you knew," Victor "Kool A.D." Vazquez taunts. "You can ask what it is / But I still wouldn't tell you."...full text |
| Avclub |
| A joke band that isn’t really a joke band, Das Racist makes a serious impression on its debut full-length, Relax. The album—which follows a cheeky, viral single and two well-liked mix-tapes—is a culmination of everything that’s already known about the Brooklyn three-piece. Encyclopedic rhymes and referential material abound. The beats are wily, far too glitchy to be considered straight rap, yet much too grounded lyrically to be written off as just weird dance music. But this has always been the Das Racist modus operandi: to play all sides, and to do it as blithely as possible. The act does have a conscience, though, a social awareness much more keen than its critics (and even some of its fans) would give it credit for. Take the middle verse from the track “Shut Up, Man”: “People act like they know me / They say I act white but sound black / Act black but sound white / But what is my sound bite supposed to sound like?” Race relations and social identity are definite thematic elements on Relax, though both are addressed mostly indirectly, buried in non sequiturs and clever pop-culture references. Das Racist is, after all, of the millennial generation; brown kids weaned on Yo! MTV Raps and the Cosbys, on the first Nintendo and the X-Men cartoon, on the emergence of new media and that thing called Twitter. A sarcastic embrace of social ills is in their blood. But if that’s getting too deep, don’t worry. Relax still proffers spitfire rhymes about inconsequential stuff like White Castle and how “she got her booty in the air.” That’s the one thing about Das Racist that never fails to impress: its acutely modern sense of humor....full text |
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