Portland, Oregon is known for a lot of things, namely: Being hipster as hell–spawning Fred Armistan’s sketch comedy show Portlandia. Also, having great donuts, tons of food carts and microbreweries. Overall, the city is known for being extremely progressive and diverse. Basically, Portland is great. Only in Portland would God Fears Aliens exist. The collective, God Fears Aliens, frequently shortened to GFA, features a number of producers and rappers who call the Northwest home.
The group has beats from Potholes In My Blog frequent Stacy and Modern Outfit’s snugsworth, among others. Delete is an ambitious 17-track release that stylistically jumps from Houston-style chopped and screwed to sampled boom-bap joints in an instant. The topic of conversation for the group remains consistent throughout: money, power, drugs and sexual conquest. Over heavy, trunk-rattling beats the confident bunch tell tales of how large they live. What they’ve put together is similar to early 2000s Houston hip-hop, but their home is nearly 2000 miles northwest of Codeine rap’s epicenter.
Honestly, I think you’ll either love this or hate it. You’ll love its beats, but despise its flippant attitudes. Or, you’ll engage with its voices, but wish the production was more consistent. Personally, I felt like I was listening to something alien, something new and different. It was shocking at first, but I liked that a lot and learned to love the album’s diversity. One thing this album is not short of is personality. If you’re looking for an great introduction to an emerging collective, give this one a listen.
Marinate Media 