We’re living in 2018, and J. Cole is now right at the top of the hip-hop mountain. As far as having a co-sign or a mentor, you could do much worse than him. So after building a few years of clout through signings with both Interscope and Cole’s own Dreamville Records, Paris-born rapper Bas well aware that his new album Milky Way is his potential introduction to rap stardom.
The opening track on Milky Way, “Icarus”, makes it clear that he can feel that freight-train of IG followers coming. There’s a soft, allusive intro by Bas himself and a somewhat off-topic refrain by Ari Lennox ruminating on a soured relationship. But when Bas kicks into his verse, it’s like hovering a lighter near open gas.
Like most introductions to an album, Bas hop-skips across a number of topics, but the most interesting one is where you can tell he’s really freaking out over the prospect of being more rich and successful than he could’ve ever dreamed. He talks about the emptiness upon making his mother proud (“told my momma I’d be back and that I’d make it, both came true/thought I was escapin’, just to find myself back in the Matrix/both pills blue”) and of feeling the weight of providing for others (“I ain’t livin’ for me, I’m the youngest of five/And if I don’t survive, I don’t know who could console ’em”). “Icarus” feels like the instant just before his life is about to drastically change. You can feel the nerves in his voice, and you cross your fingers for him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9DKhfjwU1M
Bas’ Milky Way is out now.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 