There Existed an Addiction to Blood

It’s almost some cosmic joke on the intersection of mainstream culture and the avant-garde that one of noise-rap’s most abrasive groups is fronted by a man who’s halfway to an EGOT because of his part in Hamilton. But give this to Daveed Diggs: put some morbid, hissing synthesizers and snares that sound like sudden-onset chills beneath him, and his scenarios start sounding a lot more like John Carpenter’s than Lin-Manuel Miranda’s. There Existed an Addiction to Blood follows in the traditions of Gravediggaz and Three 6 Mafia in making the trappings of horror fit so naturalistically into hip-hop’s familiar themes, where the grotesque is highlighted in every corner of the game from police violence to mafioso cruelty to racist bloodlust.