Music Review: "Kill The Wolf" by B. Dolan

- by Señor Editor, 19 July 2015

It’s been a bit over a week since B. Dolan’s “Kill the Wolf” album came out and we just got our hands on it. A long time in the making, this is Dolan’s third official studio album and the expectations were high. The following is a long rant of a review, written straight after hearing the whole thing. 

"Kill The Wolf" cover. Click to enlarge.

B. Dolan is a strange man. Though he started out as a rapper, it wasn’t until after his debut album that most people realized he raps.  I first heard of Dolan around 2008 and immediately bought his first album The Failure, even though it was nothing like the things I normally listened to. It was a spoken word record, but unlike any spoken word you ever heard before. It was something of a concept album, written from the perspective of a lone apocalypse survivor, possibly slowly going insane as he reminisces on the pre-apocalypse world. It sounds like high concept, but Dolan’s lyrics, accompanied mostly by ambient noises, made it all very real instead of a “rapper liked Fallout a lot, made a record as a character from it” thing. 

It was weirdly emotional, often unnerving or downright scary, and it featured some elements Dolan would later incorporate into his other albums (like building tracks over the stories of well-known historical figures, or pop culture icons, and telling a deeper story in 3 minutes than an Oscar-nominated biopic would in 2 hours). It was and still is an incredible album… but it’s not a rap record.

I’m mentioning all this because it’s quite amazing how Dolan has been shaping his career. After The Failure, B. started a series of hip-hop mixtapes called “House of Bees”, where he was rapping his ass off on some of the best tracks in recent years (if you’re a longtime reader, you may recall a short piece about “Which Side Are You On” years ago), and people really began paying attention to him. In-between the mixtapes came the sophomore album Fallen House, Sunken City, produced entirely by Alias and showing yet another side to the Rhode Island emcee. It was almost the exact sonic opposite of The Failure – a straight up rap record, very intense and heavy, with loud beats matched with a new, beastly delivery from Dolan. That was in 2010.

And now, just a few days ago, Dolan’s third studio album, Kill the Wolf, came out. I’m writing this straight after listening to the album in full for the first time, so treat this as a first impressions kind of thing. Even though “personal is political”, this seems like a much more personal than political record from B. Since I insisted on writing right after listening, I’m not willing to go in-depth with my lyrical analysis of this stuff yet. There’s a lot to take in, and nobody likes reading bullshit. I will say this: Dolan sounds brand new again, while also bringing back a lot of his signature style. I read somewhere that this is the first album he really feels is exactly what he wanted to make as an artist, and I can definitely believe that when I hear the conviction in his vocals.

Check out the first single from the album, “Alright”. Also, this is apparently a fan-made video. Clearly, Dolan’s fans are as strange as he is, but much sexier.

This record is tough as shit. Musically, there’s a whole lot of really big beats here, accompanied by as much guitars as electronic loops. Listening to tracks like “Alright” or “The Memory of Bombs”, it’s easy to see why it took so long to complete the album. This is really polished to perfection. There’s a few guests on Kill the Wolf (including Buck 65 and Aesop Rock, both on the “Jailbreak” single, though they are the most “visible” of the guests), but everything sounds very cohesive. I feel this album gives B. more space than Fallen House did, and it benefits from it. You wanna hear what Dolan’s got to rap.

While listening to Kill the Wolf I was making notes on the highlights of this record, but the list soon started looking like most of the tracklist. When things take off on “Lazarus”, the opening track, Dolan rarely slows down (but when it does, it is equally engaging, like the mentioned “Memory of Bombs”). “Graffiti Busters” is sure to get a lot of people excited, and so is “Stay Inspired”, one of my definite favorites here (below). The hard-hitting beat coupled with the simple riff gives it a nice old school energy. “Who Killed Russel Jones” is a track I’ve been hearing about years before actually hearing the thing, and it’s one of the aforementioned “character pieces” Dolan did on each of his albums. I wasn’t disappointed by it. It’s far from your average tribute song, and you shouldn’t expect an easy answer to the question it poses.

I will be giving this more spins for sure, as it’s one of the best things to come out in recent years and a very nice milestone in the career of one of the best rappers of the 2000s. With three mixtapes and three official albums under his belt, it’s tough not to pay attention to Dolan. The man is highly unpredictable, but you can always expect some good stuff. Go cop the album, it’s out right now on Strange Famous Records.


You can also listen to the full record right here, if you're somehow not yet convinced. How good is B. Dolan on "Kill The Wolf"? Also, follow Dolan on Twitter and on Facebook to be up to date with tour dates, news and other stuff.
How do you rate it compared to his other records? Let us know below!

More stuff you may feel like checking out:
- The "Which Side Are You On" article
- 2012 Sage Francis interview
- More Trash Mutant music articles

Tagged: music, Reviews.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Loading

---

Follow @TrashMutant