184 words about The House Is Burning

Zay's doing okay!

Of course, Isaiah Rashad is no one's savior. You want his old shit, buy his old album. Zay spent five years recording The House Is Burning, by which we mean living, and living kinda hard, per reports, spending whatever good will (and legal tender) earned from The Sun's Tirade before coming up for air (and sobriety). He says he records tracks quickly, in an hour or so, which makes a sort of sense, when you hear him rap: The verses lurch out of him like snakes from his from lungs, like they'd been growing for five years down there. I spend at least 15% of my waking hours mad at TDE for not releasing more records, but then they come out, and they're like this: these mercurial voices and wildly disparate sonic collages all rendered somehow legible through sheer force of editorial clarity. Zay's more than his moodboard, but still, here is an album in which Smino and Three 6 and Greedo all feel at home. Connoisseur shit, really. Some art takes time. Some art steals time. Drugs can be the same way, right?