The media likes to re-spin tales of how New Yorkers all came together after the towers fell, and there is some truth to those, but as far as I could see, what drew us closest together was a pervading sense of impending doom. In other words, despite any reports to the contrary, the general consensus around New York after 9/11 was that the world was coming to an end. At least, that was the story the city’s independent hip-hop world had to tell at the time, and it was that narrative, combined with readings of Watchmen, Behold a Pale Horse and the selected works of Chuck Palahniuk and Philip K. Dick, that nourished the paranoia of many a mind like mine back then.
L’Orange and billy woods’ “The End,” at least for this listener, harks to those days; the days when concept albums about Armageddon debuted faster than terror alert updates; when scene stalwart El-P deadpanned, “Oh, you didn’t know that the apocalypse was here, you didn’t realize that we’re in the middle of World War III and we’re all going to die soon?”; when a South Africa-born, New York-bred femcee by the name of Jean Grae embraced the role of cataclysmic seraph, spitting suicidal resolve in the face of approaching hellfire.
Is it the fiery-eyed shadows of characters like these that stalk billy woods’ dreaded silhouette down graffitied passages in the Jay Brown-directed video for “The End,” the first single off L’Orange’s The Orchid Days due out April 8 on CD and Orange & Grey Vinyl from Mello Music Group? Time will/won’t tell.
• L’Orange: http://lorangeproductions.com
• billy woods: https://www.facebook.com/williambodega
• Jay Brown: http://vimeo.com/jbrown
• Mello Music Group: http://mellomusicgroup.com
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