What will happen when you base your style on the golden era of hip-hop but completely shake it from its foundation and cover it in the progressive modern garments of the digital age of the second and third decades of the new millennium? al.divino is breaking the rules of the game, ignoring the boundaries of the music industry, and creating a new surrealistic sub-genre. Before we introduce the album Monumentality, we are going to show you the path from vision to monumental significance.
I. Apollo Knox (vision)
al.divino was first recognized by the rap community as Apollo Knox. A young talent from Salem, a city in Massachusetts (US), first started releasing music in 2011 while he was still in high school. At the age of seventeen, he already had experience in producing and had several music videos to his credit, which made their way into the consciousness of rap fans. Apollo gave an interview in 2013 to the radio station Raw Report, which brought us information that will help us better understand his current work. He wasn’t shy about the fact that he wants to be remembered as one of the best and said it right at the beginning of the interview.
Already, the track Never the Less from 2012 gave us a taste of what is coming. Strong, biting voice and influence from New York’s boom bap. Tracks by Apollo Knox are much more conservative than projects by al.divino, but already he was bending some stereotypes to his own liking. An example of this are the tracks lasting just 90 seconds. Apollo himself is not trying to hide the influence of the golden era on his own music. Artists like Mobb Deep, Boot Camp Clik, AZ, or Nas were his influences from a young age. We will talk later about why Apollo’s name is as significant in a new era of underground rap as names like Roc Marciano or Westside Gunn, whom Apollo looked up to.
While doing the interview for Radio Raw, he said that in the future he would like to work with Action Bronson, Marciano, Alchemist, Madlib, Premier, RZA, or 9th Wonder. Apollo always knew how to choose a first-class production; after all, he was working on the track Brainstorm (2013) with Lord Finesse. When asked where he sees himself in a few years, he said: “I’m an emcee who is consistently reinventing my style, I’ve also moved each year of my high school career. Since my life usually involves constant change, I can’t quite say. But hopefully touring and working with legends.”
Strong foundation in quality music, passion to work with the legends of the industry, and vision. We can already see the success of al.divino in Apollo Knox. But let’s leave the past in the past and dive into the aggressive and psychedelic music of al.divino.
II. al.divino (progress)
The Spanish phrase “al.divino” takes on a specific meaning only in context, but it is most often understood as “of the divine” or “divine” or “to the divine.” The very pseudonym is wrapped in something mythical, and we haven’t even gotten to the music yet. In the context of the underground, al.divino’s work can be included in the post-Marciano and post-Griselda periods. These aforementioned entities have changed underground rap in the most fundamental way in the past decade. His lyrics also revolve around the gangster underworld, ghettos, drug trafficking, explicit violence, labor, and art.
Like the trio from Griselda, al.divino transforms violent scenery, which you feel is based on experience and reality, into something supernatural, perhaps even extravagant. The rapper’s music feels like exploitation films or overblown Hong Kong action cinema, spiced with surreal elements. The violent scenes in the lyrics are then complemented by numerous expressive adlibs that enhance the listening experience. These elements may make al.divino absolutely unlistenable for listeners not versed in rap. His work drowns in its own style in an unprecedented way, so talk of banality or ordinariness is absolutely out of the question.
Moreover, his music is still evolving. You can reach for relatively more conservative and less chaotic projects like Divino Edition, Divino Edition 2, or Abrakadabra, Alakazam!, where the production and the rap itself act as two separate entities that work together. In our opinion, the best starting point is the Kilogram project, which was completely produced by DJ Muggs. The Cypress Hill legend shaped his sound to meet the rapper’s needs. The project doesn’t wallow in complete entropy, and the beats have some rules, but it’s a very experimental album compared to the competition.
The latest records, which the artist releases under the pseudonym cvv.vino and, in most cases, produces himself, are already 100% experimental chaos. cvv.vino has transcended the rules of rap, embedding production and spoken word in such a way that you have a hard time separating the two aspects when listening to it. The album’s melodies capture the essence of the artist’s life and act as a sort of soundtrack. However, the content of the work itself is not the only thing that makes the artist unique.
III. cvv.vino (freedom)
In case you want to go straight to the streaming services after reading the first half of our article, we have to disappoint you because you won’t find many of his albums there. That doesn’t mean that his catalog isn’t rich, and the opposite is true. al.divino is sharing his music with his fans through Bandcamp. That wouldn’t be something unusual; what is unusual are the prices for each project.
al.divino is against the old, rotten system of the music industry, where most of the profit from music goes to the pocket of whoever else but the artist himself. In the last several years, the majority of the underground rap scene has changed its business model. Artists are concentrating on the release of limited quantities of vinyl. Some of them (for example, Mach-Hommy) see their fans as investors, and they are offering exclusive, very expensive versions of their albums. al.divino took this model and applied it even to digital releases. Most of his discography is priced around $40, some of them even around $100. Often, you can’t even listen to the album before you buy it, so you are investing $100 into the digital copy of something you don’t even know if you like. Exclusivity is the beginning and end of al.divino’s business model, and as we can see, it works perfectly. His psychedelic, aggressive music breaks all the rules and sounds very anarchistic. His business model then makes sense.
Very interesting are the covers of each album. Those (same as music) are attacking the senses and fantasy of the listener. The first few covers are reinterpretations of famous art pieces, and on a recent release, al.divino started using his own art. You could describe his style as a combination of neo-expressionism and graffiti. Each of the projects is surrounded by unpredictability and expectations.
If we were asked to describe the carrier of Apollo Knox, AKA al.divino AKA cvv.vino until now in one word, it would definitely be freedom. Personal experimental music that is aimed at the senses of listeners, a business model that operates just with fans, and a fantasy-stimulating, unconventional cover for each album. Those are the ingredients that lead to monumentality.
IV. Monumentality
The photography used on the cover of the Monumentality album was taken by photographer Francis Frith in the 1950s. We can see a man sitting on the Egyptian ruins. We will leave the interpretation of the piece to each of you. On us, it’s the breathing motives of history, future, grandeur, monumentality, and legacy. The album was released on December 4, 2018, and is comprised of 14 tracks that will entertain you for 33 minutes.
After reading the tracklist, you will instantly feel the wave of Egyptian mythology. Song Thoth’s Troth refers to the Egyptian god Troth, which is usually associated with magical arts, a system of writing, and the judgment of death, but if we tried to look for these motives in the text itself, we wouldn’t find any. But the atmosphere of the music is definitely on point; the sound itself feels magical, and parts of the rapper’s life are being chaotically thrown through the whole text, so it feels like you are constantly moving through time and space. Scenes from gangsters’ lives then came really close to the judgment of death. Song Zoroastrianism is named after the Iranian religion Zoroastrianism, which worships the three elements (water, earth, and fire). Of which fire is the most important. To which element is al.divino’s music closest? Yes, we think so too.
Monumentality is a piece of art that will justify its name. al.divino should be admired for his road to success, cadence of releases, and overall influence on the underground scene. Similarly sounding rappers like Estee Neck, Starker, and Hidden Character (???) are going in a unique musical direction that will definitely be worth following in the upcoming years, and al.divino will definitely leave on the history of underground rap the same mark as antique Egypt did on history.
Sources: Paisonweiss, Wrackshopmovement, Def Goldbloom
Translated from Czech by Rado.
