Eastern Medicine, Western Illness

Producer Preservation, who’s made tracks for Jean Grae, Aesop Rock, Raekwon and many others, made this album while living in Hong Kong. All the MCs (Ka, Billy Woods, Quelle Chris, Mach-Hommy, Roc Marciano and more) are from the US, but all the music is sourced from Chinese albums. The cumulative effect is somewhat akin to old RZA productions, but even grimier and slightly more alien-sounding, as the sound of Asian studio musicians interpreting ’70s jazz-funk has an uncanny valley effect, the crackle of the less than perfectly cared-for LPs adding a technostalgic haze. Samples of newscasters and local politicians talking about Hong Kong’s economy — at one point, we hear an auctioneer selling…something…for hundreds of millions of dollars — add another head-spinning dimension, putting a twist on hip-hop’s oft-remarked materialism.