5.17.2024
Mach-Hommy Concludes Tetralogy with Latest Release #RICHAXXHAITIAN
The Acclaimed Haitian-American Artist Welcomes Kindred Spirits and Collaborators Including Black Thought, Roc Marciano, 03 Greedo, and Producers Kaytranada, Conductor Williams, Quelle Chris, Sadhu Gold, and More as He Seeks a Brighter Future For His Country and His People
“#RICHAXXHAITIAN” album artwork
The Album:
Mach-Hommy–the acclaimed and prolific artist who keeps his government name unpublished, maintains no social media presence, and covers his face with a bandana of the Haitian flag–releases #RICHAXXHAITIAN, his first solo studio album since 2021, out now on all platforms. Released in time for Haitian Flag Day (May 18th), #RICHAXXHAITIAN channels the troubled political evolution of Haiti, as well as its rich cultural inheritance. Galvanized by the country’s turbulent past, Mach-Hommy presents a beacon towards a better future.
#RICHAXXHAITIAN is the fourth album in a tetralogy of albums that examine Mach-Hommy’s relationship with his homeland and provide a wide-ranging account of how its issues intersect with problems facing the world at large. While the first album in the series, H.B.O. (Haitian Body Odor), reclaimed an ugly stereotype, and his two acclaimed 2021 albums, Pray For Haiti and Balens Cho (Hot Candles), chronicled hardship and recovery, #RICHAXXHAITIAN is a small musical panacea for his homeland amidst poverty and political strife, combating the public’s negative images of Haiti by focusing on the greatness and prosperity of the country’s diaspora. Over the course of the album, Mach-Hommy emphasizes the country’s potential, strategizing ways that his troubled homeland could become an exemplar of Black cultural and economic excellence.
#RICHAXXHAITIAN draws from a variety of musical styles, welcoming producers like Grammy-winning producer Conductor Williams, along with Multi-Grammy-winning producer KAYTRANADA, Grammy-nominated producer Quelle Chris, longtime associate Sadhu Gold, and others, to indulge their most creative impulses. The album progresses from vintage samples from the pre-rock era to futuristic electronic, jazz, and soul music, sketching a potential path for Haiti to evolve from developing nation to Afro-Futurist paradise.
Last week’s single, “#RICHAXXHAITIAN,” a collaboration with KAYTRANADA and L.A. legend 03 Greedo, exemplifies Mach in the latter mode, using a house-inflected instrumental and an interpolation of Afrobeat legend Odion Iruoje’s “Ikebe” to provide a luxurious platform for both emcees to flex their hard-earned wealth. Focus track “COPY COLD,” produced by Quelle Chris, draws from the other end of the spectrum. The song features a guest verse from Black Thought, who has long praised Mach-Hommy and called him one of his favorite emcees, as both emcees unfurl some of their densest verses to date. Originally recorded as a demo during a difficult period of Mach’s life, nearly ten years ago, Mach was inspired to dust off the old tape with the hopes of collaborating with an emcee of Black Thought’s caliber on the track. Over Quelle Chris’s rippling piano instrumental, the two rappers beat against the current mode of label-driven rap beef, instead elevating the art of the emcee with kindred spirit collaboration.
03 Greedo and Black Thought lead a long list of collaborators that make #RICHAXXHAITIAN one of Mach-Hommy’s most ambitious albums to date. Mach connects with R&B/jazz luminary HEPHZIBAH on “SONJE,” an Afro-Futurist and psychedelic highlight that approaches the dissonant highs of 70s jazz fusion. Buffalo-based activist/singer/songwriter Drea D’Nur graces “POLITickle” with her luminous vocals, putting a button on a song that directly comments on how global capitalism tramples culture and fosters poverty. Mach rolls out the red carpet for Roc Marciano on the brief, but brilliant “ANTONOMASIA,” as the two underground heroes trade verses over big band jazz samples and tribal drums. Mach feels right at home when rapping with frequent collaborators like Your Old Droog, Tha God Fahim, and Big Cheeko, providing a familiar anchor for longtime fans and ice cold bars for anyone who might not be familiar with their chemistry.
Born in Newark and raised in Port-Au-Prince amongst the elders of his culture, Mach-Hommy has always strongly identified with his home country’s struggle, and his people’s resilience. Haiti was the world’s first Black republic formed as the result of a successful slave revolt. The Caribbean nation’s very existence was a thumb in the nose of white supremacy, heralding the gleaming potential of Black self-government in the new world. Of course, the colonial powers could not let this stand: shortly after Haiti won independence, its former colonial overlord France levied a punitive tax, designed to cripple the young nation’s economy and prevent it from growing into a power in the Caribbean. Still, despite the various man-made and natural disasters that have plagued the island nation over the centuries, the people of Haiti have grown strong, developing an influential cultural tradition and a vibrant diaspora, of which Mach-Hommy is a proud member.
Attempting to transform our modern dystopia into a utopia using only his rhymes and force of will, Mach-Hommy invites us all, from his most loyal investors to his freshest fans, to imagine a brand new world. With #RICHAXXHAITIAN, that seemingly impossible dream creeps ever closer.
“I’ve always wanted to rep for Haiti and the cultural and intellectual richness we’ve provided the world,” Mach-Hommy says. “From our musical styles like kontradans that have influenced world music, our natural resources which provide so much raw material for so many important advancements in technology, our thinkers that pioneered philosophical movements and Black pride, and our spiritual leaders who kept the religious traditions of Guinea alive and intact, the religious traditions of Ayiti….”
Stream #RICHAXXHAITIAN: https://too.fm/kxjk19e | apple
Buy #RICHAXXHATIAN on vinyl, CD, and cassette at Zotanica
#RICHAXXHAITIAN tracklist:
1 (…) (beat curated by August Fanon)
2 ANTONOMASIA (featuring Roc Marciano) (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
3 POLITickle (featuring Drea D’Nur) (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
4 SONJE (featuring HEPHZIBAH – production and composition by the same)
5 PADON (featuring Tha God Fahim) (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
6 EMPTY SPACES (featuring Your Old Droog) (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
7 SUR LE PONT d’AVIGNON (Reparation #1) (production by Conductor Williams)
8 XEROX CLAT (special guest Haitian Jack) (production by Conductor Williams)
9 GORGON ZOE LAN (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
10 THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
11 COPY COLD (featuring BLACK THOUGHT) (production by Quelle Chris)
12 #RICHAXXHAITIAN (featuring 03 GREEDO) (produced by KAYTRANADA)
13 LON LON (curated by Fortes)
14 AUX BON PARFUMS (beat curated by Messiah Muzik)
15 SAME 24 (featuring Big Cheeko)
16 GUGGENHEIM JEUNE (beat curated by Sadhu Gold)
17 HOLY ____. (production by Conductor Williams)
Photo credit: Manfred Baumann
Please contact Michelle or Kevin for more info.
The Background:
Defying convention and transcending interpretation as he blazes his own path through the music industry, Mach-Hommy is a true original. The prolific Haitian-American artist can be hard to track, physically and metaphysically: his face and birth name remain a mystery, he does not use social media, and his Machography spans more than 50 albums, some only available in limited-edition physical formats, some gone forever as limited-edition digital releases. When they’re out in the world, Mach exhibits them like high art, selling them at prices that reflect their true value, not the artificially deflated value imposed upon music by the streaming age. Mach-Hommy’s incisive lyrics probe the frailty of the human condition, arranged into alchemical verses that draw instant rap hands from even the most-seasoned hip-hop head (“…every bar is rap chemistry” – Rolling Stone; “Over the past five years, Mach has made some of the strangest, most incisive, most tantalizingly intertextual rap music in the world” – GQ).
Exclusivity has been an integral part of Mach’s brand, giving off the aura of a man rapping from the penthouse of a billion-dollar high-rise complex, covered with spray painted Basquiat tags, hidden in the middle of a magic forest only accessible by solving age-old riddles. But now, Mach-Hommy is interested in being more forward-facing. “I’m on my Hommy Appleseed shit,” he says. “Now that I’ve done the so-called impossible, the next thing for me to do is make sure this music spreads all over—making sure samples are cleared so the music can play wherever I need it to play. I may have been contracting before because that was what was good for me in that place. Now I’m in a place where I should expand. But don’t expect to see anything weighing down the impact and the style of how I present material. I’m still gonna be Mach-Hommy.”
#RICHAXXHAITIAN, Mach’s new album, is now streaming on all platforms, and is available for purchase on vinyl, CD, and cassette at his official store.
Critical Praise:
Read Mach-Hommy’s 3-Part FADER Cover Story (written in part by Mach himself): 1 | 2 | 3
“Over the past five years, Mach has made some of the strangest, most incisive, most tantalizingly intertextual rap music in the world…He has a pliable voice that effectively communicates contempt (often) or longing (selectively); his writing seems like collage until it doesn’t, breaking from interpolated lyrics and allusion into richly rendered scenes from his own memory.” – GQ
“…every bar is rap chemistry” – Rolling Stone
“The charms of Hommy’s music are on full display as he moves slickly, with casually clever wordplay, through well-curated soul samples.” – The New Yorker
“…tightly constructed yet freely floating through hip-hop’s past and present like ghosts in Gore-Tex jackets.” – Pitchfork
“Mach is worldly the way you imagine a spy would be, or at least upper management in a global oil conglomerate: He knows how to order coffee in Damascus and a hit in Paris, knows which local toughs to muscle out and which to charm into his service.” – Pitchfork”
“Hip-hop heads love to talk about that feeling. It’s a nebulous concept, at times an old-head argument to dismiss new folks, and in other instances a passionate plea to try and articulate what can be so powerful and transformative about hip-hop. That feeling, while oftentimes trite, is the best way to convey to a latecomer what makes Mach-Hommy the most exciting MC today.” – Billboard
“His work is often crammed with diasporic twoness, but crammed with other doublenesses, too.” – NPR
“Mach-Hommy is special. He can rap absurdly well, and he could have a career on that alone, but he doesn’t seem to want it. Instead, he seems to want to exist in a lane that did not exist before him. He’s pulling it off.” – Stereogum
Links:
Mach-Hommy: official site | zotanica | youtube | spotify | apple
#RICHAXXHAITIAN: https://too.fm/kxjk19e | apple
“#RICHAXXHAITIAN” ft. 03 Greedo & KAYTRANADA: https://too.fm/zqqamx7