NATAS — WHEREYOHOOD@ | Esham & Detroit Horrorcore

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NATAS WHEREYOHOOD@

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YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARLn4S1uFQk

Esham released his first album in 1989. He was sixteen. The record was called Boomin’ Words from Hell and it made Detroit notice that something different was happening in its basement. Before Eminem, before D12, before Insane Clown Posse built a empire on face paint and Faygo, there was Esham; a kid from the east side producing his own beats, writing his own lyrics, and calling the result “acid rap.”

He meant it literally. The style was supposed to feel like a bad trip. Hip-hop beats welded to death metal guitar riffs, lyrics about death, drugs, paranoia, and Satan delivered in a flat Detroit snarl. No melody. No hooks. Just pressure.

In 1992 he formed NATAS with Mastamind and T-N-T. The name is “Satan” backwards, which is the kind of provocation that got you noticed in the early 90s and also the kind that got your album blamed for a teenager’s suicide. Their debut Life After Death was connected to a 17-year-old fan who killed himself playing Russian roulette while listening to it. The controversy gave them a permanent reputation and also ensured that no mainstream door would ever open for them.

NATAS kept going anyway. Eight albums over two decades. A rotating cast of guests. T-N-T died in a car accident in 2014. Esham said there would not be another NATAS album after that.

“WHEREYOHOOD@” was released in 2014, around the time of FUQERRBDY, their final album. It is not the best-produced NATAS track. It is not the most famous. What it is, is the sound of a group that has spent 22 years being told they are too dark, too violent, too weird, and has stopped caring. The beat is skeletal. The video is low-budget. Esham and Mastamind trade verses about exactly where they come from and exactly what they think of you.

This is the Detroit sound that the rest of the world did not hear until Eminem translated it for mass consumption. Esham never got that translation. He stayed raw, stayed local, stayed acid. More than three decades in and he is still here, still producing, still calling it Reel Life.

Crepi il lupo! 🐺