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In the liner notes of this album’s bandcamp page, Montag credits J Dilla as one of his influences, which is not a rare source of inspiration for sample-based projects. But there’s an interesting flip side to J Dilla’s legacy. His album “Donuts” is one of the albums often credited with sparking the genre that opened the flood gates for today’s nostalgic, ironic, and faded music appeal: chillwave. The sunny escapism of that movement was a millenial bury-your-head-in-the-sand response to The Great Recession. Now, escapist art seems to have washed away after so much unavoidable national and global trauma, which brings us to this album where there’s nowhere to run.

This is the second hip-hop record under Richard Mireles’s That Guy Montag moniker, and second in the MDOP series (Montag’s Dreams of Poetry). Last year’s record meditated on various topics from tough love for his hometown, to the working-class grind, and being surrounded by temptation. This time around, like the album art suggests, we go deeper into the dark cavern of Montag’s mind instead of closing our eyes and finding a happy place.

When a rap album’s opening lines are about being obsolete because it’s “more deep” and has “more rhymes,” it could seem like another record about bemoaning the game and how a rapper is just too real for this world, but Montag throws out this complaint immediately and delivers on it instead. It turns out, he really does have too much to say. There are daily battles that preoccupy him, injustice everywhere he looks, and morbid thoughts that crowd his head.

Much like MDOP Vol 1, this album is a suite of short tracks meant for continuous listening, with jazzy and exotic samples dancing over boom-bap beats. But unlike the rigidness of the first album, this has a more amorphous quality — speed-ups and slow-downs, breaks and cutaways, breaking the fourth wall. The beats and samples are more tense and dense, creating a darker and more hypnotic experience. As cohesive as the songs are, there are striking idiosyncrasies throughout — the blaring salsa trumpets of SALUD, the creeping boom-bap stroll of CONSEJO, the muzak keys of the zany KNOIMSAYING. With so many tasteful and hard-to-find sample sources, it feels like entering Montag’s man cave full of merch and posters from his favorite artists and movies, sparking the curiosity to ask about each one.

His raps come with flow, tune, and conviction that’s as strong as ever. His classic Brooklyn-ish delivery has enough stiff articulation to get his point across, while keeping a playful drawl to vibe with. His scattershot lyrics stem from a stream-of-consciousness approach that would make Kendrick Lamar proud. While the beats are abstract and sonically dazzling, his tightly-packed flows are point-blank and free of overproduction; effects and ambiguity would be too much luxery for Montag’s lyrical themes.

In the opening Chicharras, we enter Montag’s world of concerns. “It’s all layers. All the mayors are straight players,” Montag declares, referring to local corruption in a verse that also mentions George Floyd’s murder, immigrant kids in cages, and how his “last name is useless, only causes more problems.” His voice is strong and the beat heats up in the second half before he speaks in a defeated tone to close it out. “To my surmise, I ain’t surprised.”

He leaves the political realm to enter existential dread in Southern Bastard. Death and the pointlessness of the daily hustle haunt these raps: “The early bird gets the worm, but when I die, my body will be eaten by the worms.” We’re reminded that we’re all as good as dead every time Montag shouts, “WAKE UP COLD!” His self-deprecation and need for empathy is at its most intense. “To be, and be felt, is really what I’m stressing. . . a broke rapper, I’m just another southern bastard!” The song samples “Matrix” by Dizzy Gillespie, which is a vibrant jazz jam through most of the song, except for a short melancholic break, which is the part that Montag chooses for himself, showing his frame of mind at the time.

In the sticky funk of Mercy, Montag summons his spirituality by performing his own street hymn to weather the dystopia of today, where we’re only thrown a bone to keep us at bay: “It’s all good. Unemployment for the hood. Stimulus checks got us knocking on wood. That’s the motto, living life on full throttle. Momma late on the payments, repo coming for the auto.” His dialogue with God comes with irresistible grooves and catchy samples zipping in and out. It’s a major highlight for sure.

The most aggressive moment is in Hellbent, where Montag even declares that he talks “mad shit” that’ll make “Gandhi want to fight.” He cranks up his cockiness and demands respect as retaliation for the world sleeping on him. It’s his way of coping, and setting himself loose results in a memorable verse full of zingers.

With lines like “get blasted like John Travolta coming out the toilet,” and “Caribbean women jerk the chicken while I’m toking,” there’s plenty of room for laughs to liven the mood in Montag’s daily musings. There are also flickers of confidence throughout, especially on I Feel Like, where Montag compares his mood to some of pop culture’s biggest victories, from Kanye’s first Grammy to Jordan’s dunks. “I feel like El Chapo with the flowers, chest hair popping out I feel like Austin Powers,” he jokes over one of the most upbeat instrumentals of the album. When the record was released as a single, it felt like a victory lap from a boastful rapper. In the context of the full album, it’s the soundtrack to self-love and holding your head up in an unforgiving world.

Our culture of excess gets scrutinized in Gluttany, but also his own experience with it. After referring to his weight gain after “living lovely,” he feels self-conscious about his prospects: “It’s all hitting me, they’re getting rid of me.” The song is book-ended by studio conversations between Montag and his studio-mate, in which he mocks people that seem important cause they have AirPods at all times, and then he becomes agitated with the excess of his own album which he feels is two songs longer than it should be. Between all the self-referential moments is the best line of the entire album: “It’s all see-through, money and the people. Life gets better doing the shit they don’t teach you.” That’s how Montag gets by: with his bullshit radar and his own hard-learned lessons.

There are triumphant moments between the distress, and cockiness between the self-deprecation. The duality of That Guy Montag is an artistic spectacle and for an album full of old-timey jazz and obscure samples, it’s an accurate snapshot of today’s worries and attitudes, anchored by the weight of his observant raps. In tune with the intensity of the album, Montag has a few lines about gun blasts, and it makes sense with his artistic approach: spit raps like a buck shot, but make it all hit like a slug.

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