8rooklyn 8atman drops Red Hot Single

Summer always has a unique soundtrack, and in 2020, it’s undisputedly coming from the hip-hop community – and specifically the genre’s iconic underground scene. Take 8rooklyn 8atman for example; right now, the up and comer is emerging from the shadows of the indie circuit this June with a new single that definitely feels like a summer-encapsulating jam in “Chitty Bang.”

His third big cut of the year so far, “Chitty Bang” gets us started with an eerily surreal haze of synthetic melodicism before immediately dropping us into the blaze of verses that 8rooklyn 8atman unfurls as though it were second nature. With his in-studio confidence at this juncture of his career, it’s clear that this rapper is onto something really special with his sound, but he isn’t overdoing it in this single at all. There’s an unrushed sensibility to his delivery here that speaks volumes about his comfortability with the medium, and even with his relaxed attitude intact, the urgency of the lyrical execution keeps us on the edge of our seats from beginning to end. That’s hard for any artist to accomplish, regardless of experience level or talent, but in “Chitty Bang,” 8rooklyn 8atman makes it look and sound pretty easy.

The bass in this track is heavy as a ton of bricks, but I wouldn’t call it bombastic (especially in comparison to some of the other stuff I’ve been hearing on commercial hip-hop radio in the last couple of months). The vocal has been interwoven with the percussion to create an almost pop-influenced stylization of the grooves, and yet nothing here ever sounds or feels over-varnished for even a second. To put it as simply as possible, the production quality that “Chitty Bang” enjoys is definitely a cut above what I was anticipating I would hear in this new release from 8rooklyn 8atman, but it isn’t what makes the song an honest-to-God hit from a critical point of view. It’s essentially what makes it fit in with the mainstream without turning itself over to the same corporate tethering that a lot of other hot tracks would be right now.

To say that there is a lot of good hip-hop out on record store shelves this month might be too great an understatement for me to make as a music journalist, but even with that being the case, 8rooklyn 8atman’s “Chitty Bang” is a definite standout. I’d really like to hear some more collaborations with Dre da Most in the future, but even if this is an isolated instance of their working together, I hope it doesn’t mark the last occasion 8rooklyn 8atman brings in another brilliant mind to work with him in the studio. Experimenting with other artists, as he did in this release, can lead to the discovering of talents than a player wouldn’t have known they had otherwise, and that’s partly why “Chitty Bang” is an integral measurement of where its performer is at right now in his career. He has my full support moving forward, and soon enough, I believe he’ll have yours, too.

Mindy McCall