Album Review: Bossalinis & Fooliyones by Main Attrakionz

Mondre and Squadda B of Main Attrakionz present their best work to date with Bossalinis & Fooliyones, even with its ironically funny cover art. The big booty chick and old school Impala are more indicative of a lifestyle they grew up watching on BET than their actual day-to-day. Underground rappers tend to smoke, write, rap, record, smoke, tour and then repeat, which is clear by their songs.

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Gearing up for the release of Bossalinis & Fooliyones, rapper MondreM.A.N. (one half of the Main Attrakionz, along with partner Squadda B) told FACT, "We don't feel like dancing, we don't go to parties, and we don't make no party music." Following the trajectory of Main Attrakionz's career, which has produced a multitude of free solo and collaborative mixtapes hinged on celestial samples and irreverent rhymes, it's not a terribly surprising statement. Wedged somewhere between Bay Area peer Lil B's prolific and ever-expanding thought balloons and the spacey introversion of chillwave, "cloud rap" was viewed as the antithesis of party rap, a music that made little sense outside of a weed-fogged, wi-fi enabled bubble built for one.

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‘Cloud rap’ is a new form of hip-hop that’s rejected rap’s bulky thrust in favour of hazy textures and light FX. Main Attrakionz, two of the genre’s stars, make faded and vaguely sad hip-hop and conjure a Washed Out-via-Mobb Deep sound. In their street scene, corner kids deal with poverty’s many tragedies with angelic grace rather than aggression.

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As much as anyone else, Main Attrakionz have been responsible for much of the groundwork that’s established the basic tropes and expectations of “cloud rap”. While Lil’ B’s YouTube trolling and some of A$AP Rocky’s LiveLoveA$AP have probably been the most visible examples of the form, last year’s 808s & Dark Grapes II was and might always be the genre’s Nevermind, that sort of a-ha moment that makes the whole thing seem viable and vital. Maybe it’s the fact that most of their solo and group mixtapes play around with the same style and they’re bored, or just the influence of finally recording an album within the confines of a label, but Bossalinis & Fooliyones not only rejects a lot of what made the group interesting in the past, it casts them in a role that threatens to expose a lot of their flaws as performers.

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An intriguing and accessible set from a very modern rap group. Noel Gardner 2012 Track four of 17 on this, the debut album proper by Oakland rap duo Main Attrakionz, calls itself LFK – short for Lo-Fi Kings. If you’re just tuning in now, you’d be forgiven for wondering where they’re coming from on this one. Bossalinis & Fooliyones, while not exactly what you’d call a mainstream rap album, is consistently accessible, and in thrall to a tangle of overground production styles.

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Sometimes it pays to cut the crap and get straight to the key issue. Yeah, The Quietus is rarely so crass but sometimes it's unavoidable. Here's the crux: 6/10. Could've been 8/10 if they'd cut it down to forty minutes, but they didn't, so...there you go. Got it rocktards and other curious ….

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