The Black Plague Doctors offer something rare with "Falling With Style." Taken from their latest project, "Prometheus," the Atlanta-bred band and production collective strongly adheres to their mission statement. "Falling With Style" seems an invitation to slow down and feel everything again. Mixing up the looped-tape crunch of sample-based production with the supple equanimity of live instrumentation, the song distinguishes between jazz-inflected introspection and hip-hop conscience.
Centered around analog drum machines and their trusty Roland SP404, the collective offers a laid-back groove that's loose yet imperfectly thoughtful. There's an earthiness to how it moves unpredictable but never anarchic, experimental yet rooted in something more profound. It is this rough-and-ready texture that sets their work apart. Dipping through a dusty vinyl crate in a candle-lit basement, every sound here feels found, not manufactured. The track matches its aesthetic stride for a poetic, pensive, and quietly urgent stride. There's substance in the flow, but the delivery remains chill, never preachy. It's conscious hip-hop that doesn't have to try too hard and instead trusts its audience to keep up.
"Falling With Style" isn't something you try to pigeonhole into genres. The Black Plague Doctors break them up and put them back together, all soulful and pure. That's the actual stroke of genius of The Black Plague Doctors. They are musicians, storytellers, time travelers, crate diggers, and keepers of the underground flame. In "Falling With Style," they demonstrate their ability to blur boundaries and leave us wondering why those boundaries exist in the first place.
Discover The Black Plague Doctors on Instagram