Review Summary: Canadian Katchinga has come up with one of the best debut hip-hop albums of 2018.
Currently, the hip-hop field is probably the hardest to break through among all popular music genres. If you don’t come from the key East or West coast centers, probably even harder. In general, you either have to have some mean beats and samples or incredible lyrics (hopefully both) and/or a well-oiled PR machine to get you anywhere close to having any kind of success.
With only two EP’s under his belt and Sky Falling being his first album, Kachinga has a hefty job ahead of him. And he’s neither from East or West coast hip-hop centers but from Canada. But based on the album, he certainly deserves his piece of success.
The album was in the pipeline for three years now, first as work Kachinga did as part of the Skool Cit collective, but finally with him pairing up with Lava Cru and Three Entertainment Group. As he put it, "The album was inspired by a journey of loss and learning, the struggle to find a balance between the good and the bad in life, and serves as a reminder to find the good within the bad and to acknowledge and accept the bad with the good.” Lofty words, but the question was could he back them up?
He could! What drives the album along is Kachinga’s great ear for a good sample, where even something like a ‘corny’ pop song can serve a great purpose (try “Boujwazee’). With obvious references and inspiration from Kanye West and Jay-Z, Katchinga, obviously has quite a vast knowledge of other genres and can use a good tune when he hears one, like from his fellow Canadienne Feist. He does integrate those tunes with a good music and beat backing to make them sensible and purposeful.
What is equally important for a hip-hop artist, Katchinga can come up with meaningful words, evidence “Justified”, “A Poet” or “Legacy”, for example. What he has come up with in the end is quite an accomplished debut album that can appeal even to those listeners who don’t usually listen to hip-hop, but even more so to the true followers of the genre. No wonder he has already toured with Childish Gambino. Greater things should be expected from Katchinga.
