Don't Sleep: Alex Wiley - Club Wiley - RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture

Welcome to “Don’t Sleep.” Throughout this series, we plan on introducing you to albums and mixtapes that we may have missed, but still want to write about. The topic of today’s edition is Alex Wiley‘s mixtape, Club Wiley, which was released last June.

Chance The Rapper is beginning to be everywhere. Vic Mensa is, as Hov would put it, one hit away. With every music scout worth their salt looking for the next up, it’s pretty odd that Alex Wiley is being relatively slept on. He and his tape, Club Wiley, have all the right ingredients. He’s distinctive: he’s got a voice that revs up like an engine, sputtering and purring, and a knack for lines and flows that stick in your ear. His commitment to a loose attitude and tightly-written schemes add up to the effortless showmanship that’s normally called star-quality. Also, he’s ugly. Not just regular ugly–Alex‘s looks are at the level of strange that opens the door to their use as a calling card. Biggie once bragged that he was “Black and ugly as ever,” and just like that, it was an asset, a part of the steez. Alex Wiley looks like Andy Milonakis after an all-nighter spent attempting to grow a beard out of dust. The world is going to love him.

Pictured: a face you can’t forget.

Of course, the music will do most of the work. Club Wiley is a loose though consistently fantastic LP, full of a wide range of tones and themes that all fit the kid like a glove. The first truly distinctive note is struck on track two, “Earfucked,” a jagged, rumbling mash of frenzied guitars and re-takes of yesteryear’s famous hooks. Wiley drops in with a perfectly fitting Eric Cartman-like presence: “We don’t give a shit about shit / Broke down, fucked up, now I’m finna face it…My phone got tits on tits.” In the track’s hectic second half, a background-Wiley belts out a bridge with a surprisingly steady singing voice while a slightly more up-close-Wiley lets off a seemingly limitless double time verse, his rhymes becoming more similar to notes than words. Whereas Twista used quick, precise enunciation to morph into a warp-speed percussive force, Wiley makes his mark doing just the opposite, slurring and occasionally barking his way through double times to become a different kind of character and instrument. He’s a perma-chilling Tazmanian Devil; the contrast between how high he raises the bar and how nonchalantly he does it is magnetic.

It’s a welcome surprise that Wiley isn’t just his quick tongue and blunt, funny demeanor. He’s got heart too. In this interview, he talks about his desire for Club Wiley to attain a “bigger” sound, and he absolutely nailed it with the choral, colossal “Suck It (Revolution).” Before reaching the show-stopping verse, the track shines for so many reasons: the sweeping, cinematic instrumental, the invigorating chorus that manages to deliver inspiration without sentimentality–a trait that is spiritually akin to “Lose Yourself.” When Wiley gets to rapping, it’s the tape’s most directly self-identifying moment, done all through his relation to others: I got niggas thats’ in Harvard, I got niggas in the pen / Got niggas resting in peace, I will never see again.” We learn concretely what his style was already telling us: he’s for the slackers and hustlers, the brains and brutes, weirdos and average joes. But is he any one of these things? No. “Then there’s me–Pinch of Swayze / Little bit of fuckboy, pinch of lazy / Little bit of genius, a pinch of crazy.” The fire, the tension and release of it make this moment the album’s peak: it’s biggest offer of emotion, catharsis, and energy. (And he’s still funny–who calls themselves a fuckboy?)

Club Wiley has a seemingly endless offering of tones: “Creepin’,” featuring Freddie Gibbs, finds Wiley inhabiting a bit more of an in-control, ultra-cool angle; “Thug Angel” and “Mo Purp” take a more aggressive, drugged out approach; “G-Unit Spinner Chain” is nearly a pop song; “K Swiss” is syrupy sweet parody. Then there’s “The Woods,” which occupies a unique pocket of being simultaneously eerie, somber, parade-level triumphant, and irreverent. Among the influences are country-rock, hallucinogenics, Teebs, and his fellow Chicago sing-rappers. It’s a substantially catchy trip, and a testament to Wiley‘s artistic range and magnetic pull: not many could make “Now we know where I’m going, get the fuck out my way, nigga” sound so definitive.

Not that we do really know exactly where Alex Wiley is going. The fact that he was able to land features from Gibbs and Bronson is a good sign, but those guys are feature machines anyways. His versatility could hold him back; he can’t be pigeon-held as a funny rapper, drug rapper, fast rapper, etc. It will be his personality–and knack for hooks–that will carry him to greater conquests. He’s a spectacle, but only in the way that your weird(est) friend is: he’s prone to dick jokes, bizarre twists, and turns of phrase and tune that you won’t soon forget. Club Wiley is an exciting, mesmerizing start to a promising career as the rap game’s weird, talented friend.