Album Review: Vursatyl

Crooked Straights (BBE)

By Casey Jarman

[HIP-HOP] It has been a staggering eight years since we've heard from Vursatyl, in the form of his group Lifesavas' sprawling blaxploitation hip-hopera, Gutterfly. If Vurs were to put out a mediocre comeback record, we'd owe him a respectful slow clap and a trip to the archives for a perusal of Lifesavas' Quannum heyday. We could all acknowledge the MC's sizable contribution to Portland music history—both musically and as a hip-hop teacher and youth mentor—then quietly move on.

We should know better. Vursatyl doesn't do mediocre. "While you're on the highway in a hybrid hydroplaning/ I tidal wave," he raps over carnivalesque beat on Crooked Straights' titular, chorusless opener. "Though they tend to overlook my opuses/ These lakes, rivers and creeks know who the ocean is." Vursatyl is so dead set on supporting this thesis that he delivers all of the album's 10 songs without bringing a single guest star onboard. He remains evocative and boastful throughout—most impressively on the breathless "It's Nothing," a lyrical tour de force that reminds of playful early-aughts cuts like Blackalicious' "Alphabet Aerobics"—meshing abstract imagery with shows of brute strength. With the exception of "Fascinating" (about the wifey) and semi-awkward closer "High Horse" (about clothes), all of these songs are centered around good-natured braggadocio.

That may seem out of step with the times, but the Lifesavas crew has always been preternaturally mainlined to hip-hop's founders, and Crooked Straights is a sorely needed reminder that this music can be cruel and fun and poetic all at the same time. That's a lesson Vurs drops on "Go for Yours," the one time he descends from on high to address the locals: "Big city stories in the small-town radius/ Barely got a hood but a club full of hoodrats/ Swearing that they're gonna put our city on the map/ But Portland's on every map of the States that I look at." Yup, it's right where Vursatyl and Lifesavas left it. 

SEE IT: Vursatyl plays Analog Cafe, 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd., with DJ Rev Shines, Maze Koroma and Zoo?, on Friday, May 29. 9 pm. $10. 21+.

WWeek 2015

Casey Jarman

Casey Jarman

Casey Jarman is a freelance editor and writer based in East Portland, Oregon. He has served as Music Editor at Willamette Week and Managing Editor at The Believer magazine, where he remains a contributing editor. He is currently working on his first book. It's about death.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office.

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