Snack Trax: New hip-hop to sample from Leimert Park and Japan

Hi, welcome to Snack Trax. This is an occasional column where I bring you bite-sized descriptions of a handful of songs you really ought to be listening to. This time, it's all about rap visuals from all over the place: from Leimert Park, Atlanta and Tokyo.

Kohh — Living Legend

"Dirt," released Oct. 28

If you follow the Japanese rap scene, you're probably already aware of Kohh. He was the subject of a VICE documentary, and batted cleanup on It G Ma, the only pan-Asian collaboration rap track to make noise in the United States.

He’s back with another solo video – “Living Legend,” off of his upcoming album "Dirt."

If you don’t speak Japanese, don’t worry about it. Kohh’s never been much of a lyricist, and even in this song, his rhymes are nursery-rhyme level:

I wanna be a living legend / while I’m still alive
I wanna be rich before I die / It’s better to be alive
than to be dead / I wanna be a living legend

Granted, Kohh has gotten a little more nuanced with the flow recently, but his fans don’t listen to him for verbal pyrotechnics. I don’t know how he manages it, but somehow listening to 2-1/2 minutes of Kohh thumb his nose at Picasso and Van Gogh and shout about buying buildings and joining the Illuminati feels positively inspiring.

He’s been mentioning ‘80s Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts both in his lyrics and in interviews  recently, and his blue hair and eccentric fashion sense make him an outlier in the Tokyo hip-hop scene. I’m not sure where Kohh’s trying to take us with all of this, but I like the direction he's pointing.

Logan — TMD

"For Your Consideration", release date tba

Spoiler alert: the video starts with a kid blowing up his own house.

Video is here. (Warning: video contains slurs, vulgarities)

From there, it’s jittery jump cuts, explosions, and constant visual glitches. The locations make no sense – one second he’s in an L.A. Chinatown restaurant dancing on the table and breathing fire like Godzilla, then he’s in the LAUSD bus yard, then he’s in the ocean, waving a road flare. The track is just as frenetic as Kohh's, but the lyrics are a lot darker.

Logan’s a new artist from Los Angeles and there’s not a lot of information available about him, but he seems to be a bit of a perfectionist. Over the past few months, he’s uploaded other tracks on his Soundcloud, most of which were a lot less conventional than “TMD,” only to delete them a couple days later. If you like what you hear, you should probably head to his Soundcloud and hear his other song, “Top Back 2.0,” while it’s still up.

Lousy Human Bastards! — "The Dunes"

"Amazing Stories Pt. 1 EP," released Oct. 23.

Need a change of pace? Check out Lousy Human Bastards, a four-member group based in Douglasville, Ga., that has been doing features as individuals for a while, but hadn’t yet pieced together a cohesive project. That changes with their first EP, and their video (warning: contains vulgarities), “The Dunes.”

This isn’t my favorite cut from the EP (right now, that’s Trump Card), but the eccentricity that makes LHB! interesting is still present in the video. Why the masks? Why are they painting mannequins? Why won’t anyone look at the camera? I have no idea.

Snubnose, who raps first and who also produced the track, sounds like he’s shrugging the entire time he raps. I’ve always been a fan of his delivery, but if you’re not paying attention, you might miss the little gems, like the French phrases and Beavis and Butthead references. Luckily, LHB! mark up their own Rap Genius lyrics to let you know what they’re saying, complete with video game screenshots and anime gifs.

You can hear the rest of their EP, Amazing Stories Pt. 1, on Soundcloud.

What's on your radar recently? Hit me @dexdigi and tell me what I should be listening to.

ALSO:

Donald Trump who? Adele to take over NBC for '25' promo

Review: 'Bob Dylan 1965-1966' opens window on a creative peak

Wet ends a brief tour at the Fonda, and begins a much bigger story