#The Rap Report: HiTech (sort of) break down their new album DÉTWAT
Table of Contents
An interview with the Detroit trio goes delightfully left.
HiTech. Photo by Colin Preston
The Rap Report is The FADER’s column dedicated to highlights in the rap world, from megastar artists to the deep underground.
Less than four minutes into our interview about HiTech’s raucous new album DÉTWAT, King Milo plainly explains the group’s goals: “We’re trying to kill club culture,” he pridefully declares with a mouth full of food. The targets of the group’s ire — exorbitant bottle service with pricey minimum spends, opulent, closed-off sections, and moody rap songs with way-too-low BPMs — have slowly eaten away at precious dancefloor space in clubs and stiffened crowds. After gulping a bite down, he continues, “We don’t want niggas sitting on the wall. A down-low freak is too common, you know what I’m saying? I want to be able to know who the freak is when I’m looking at her.”
The Detroit trio — MCs/producers King Milo and Milf Melly, DJ 47Chops — aren’t the only ones concerned about the way we party, but the group’s kinetic blend of influences — ghettotech, footwork, juke, and rap — distinguish them from the rumbling, eighth note clap-obsessed songs coming out of Milwaukee locally known as “lowend music” and club rap upstarts from the East Coast. Their industrial sound, inspired by hometown pioneers like DJ Assault and DJ Snowflake, is on some unmistakably Detroit shit (On top of that: Milo and Melly originally met at a Babyface Ray concert the former was performing at).
According to an interview in Tone Glow, the group’s self-titled 2021 debut got a wider re-release on Omar S’ FXHE Records last summer after Melly handed the Detroit stalwart a copy of the project’s original 15 CD run at an event. HiTech is a blast of raw and unfiltered energy that’s as fun-forward as it is crass. (“Henny Runtz,” for example, is probably the only ode to Backwoods you can jit to). DÉTWAT is hot-blooded, hysterical, and somehow even more unrestrained than HiTech, a worthy follow-up that demonstrates the group’s ability to keep their eyes focused on the future and with an ear pointed back at the past.
“I feel like we stuck in the time of nostalgia and everything is just like re-runs,” Chops said. “It’s like we’re creating some shit at a time where people is looking for some new shit.”
One of the first noises heard on DÉTWAT is the sound of a person panting. It’s a fair warning for what’s next: 28 panicked and carnal minutes with little breathing room. The album plays like a night out at a sticky-floored club where you’re unsure if the smell hitting your nostrils is sweat, cheap well liquor, weed, or a mutated fusion of all three. But none of that matters when you’re dancing. “ZOOTED” never stops ramping up the intensity, eventually exploding into a collage of squeaks and thunderous claps. “BIRTHDAY PEARLS” and “TEETEES DISPO” are both propelled by shimmering beats that feature heady drum rolls. But the best trick played on the whole thing is the deceitfully floaty and glittery “WHYYOUFUGGMYOPPS,” which teeters between heartbroken disbelief (Damn, bitch, you fucked the opps”) and pleas for forgiveness (“It was a play on the flo’”). All that will fly over your head on the dancefloor, but that’s more or less the point. Headphone catharsis isn’t enough — HiTech want to make sure you sweat it all away.
Two weeks ago, I hopped into a Zoom call with HiTech with the intention of asking them about the music, people, weed strains, and parties that inspired DÉTWAT. And, of course, that didn’t exactly go as planned. Here’s what they brought instead, shared for your convenience on Instagram (don’t forget to swipe right).
The FADER: Let’s get into your mood board.
King Milo: This board right here is as close as we could get it for the energy. Right here as you can see, this nigga in the upper left-hand corner — this nigga got that dog in him, and that just so happens to be the condition of all three of us young black men. And I’m sure yourself, you happen to have some of that dog in you.
Milf Melly: And y’all might be entitled to compensation [laughs].
King Milo: I don’t know about the Newport shit. I don’t smoke. I don’t know what that nigga’s doing. That nigga’s on some bullshit. But niggas be rapping, trapping. It is what it is, been in the field, so this trap all I know.
But the whips down there, we bringing it right back to Detroit. Even back to the nigga holding a Newport cigarette cake. That nigga got buffs on, I believe, so it’s just like one of them situations where everybody in this bitch smoke cigarettes. [laughs] Down at the bottom you see everybody together. There’s a bunch of people up, and I’m just noticing there’s a bunch of Black people, people of color, just having a good time, bro. But at the top we got shorties. That’s not the most traditional Detroit pose for the shorties and the niggas, but it’s definitely Detroit-based. That’s damn near the Princess right there.
And down in the corner we got [a message from someone] being excited to express to a bitch that she fucked the opps. And you know, us being young Black men who have been through things, we obviously experienced a couple of fucking shortcomings. Me, myself, I had to ask that question out loud in real life. I was like, “Damn, bitch, you fucked the opps?” It wasn’t even like a question. It was rhetorical for her.
Milf Melly: It hit like a statement, but it’s a question.
King Milo: It hit like a motherfucking statement. Everything from this board right here, it’s all speaking to experiences in Detroit. Just niggas, people, energy, but party environment. People being reclusive. It’s just all going straight back to what we talking about in DÉTWAT. The whole point of the name is really just … You can see what this shit about. The energy is coochie. We want you to shake your coochie, swing your dick from wall-to-wall. When you in a party, you could play this, and it’s going to set it off. We want you to get the energy. We want you to hear the statement, so you can see what we talking about in this field.
This is good energy, but you got to swim past all that bullshit. And then you got whips, and we ain’t even got to the car music yet. I ain’t going to lie, for the next piece we put out, and our next number, that’s going to be for Motor City. Specifically for the trunks. The trunks and the dumps. That’s for the hoes, and that’s for the niggas and the whips. This is for the Motor City off top. We already there. We’ll get there when we get there.
[Josue, one of their publicists: Imagine that we start sending this shit to everyone.]
King Milo: I ain’t going to lie, it paints a good picture. Damn near paints a perfect picture, but it’s one them things where you got to be there. This our experience for our music too. You got to be there to fully, fully get it. Word of mouth could be what it is, you could send that to everybody and tell them, “Shit, man, this is part of Detroit like … this what these niggas like in Detroit.” You can do it as best you can, but until you there, you only going to get to smell the fabric, you never get to feel it.
[Milf Melly takes in a deep sniff of the air]
King Milo: You on some bullshit. This nigga is corny.
Milf Melly: You need sound effects when you talking.
YL, “Back On The Wall”
For a while, YL’s quotidian raps mainly left listeners with mental images of harsh New York winters where the only form of escapism was daydreaming on the subway. Even though his music was cold to the touch, the warm, blissed-out beats he rapped on, and his often laid-back flow, still offered some comfort. But ever since 2021, the Chelsea rapper’s music has sounded restless, spurned by a new rapid-fire flow that makes him sound like he inhaled a bunch of nitrous. On his new single “Back On The Wall,” YL picks up right where his sample drill experiment Soda Club left off. JonBoyIce’s drums are frenzied, but the sample’s relaxed, providing YL with space to swerve between lanes with his self-motivating flexes. I could listen to him in this mode all day.
SME TaxFree, “CB4 Rappers”
SME TaxFree has a voice that sits somewhere between a low grumble and a raspy snarl. It makes his music feel agitated and bugged out like he’s liable to pop off at any given moment. On “CB4 Rappers,” all that works in his favor “All these rap niggas acting like my son, but I don’t know they mama so they can’t be my mother fucking baby,” he growls at the start of the song. On paper, it’s not an especially crazy line, but he raps it in a tunnel vision, anger-fueled run-on sentence that individually sears each word into your memory. It’s one of the funniest small moments I’ve heard in a song all year.
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