This song was released on March 15th this year. It’s the first single from Pastense‘s upcoming album, Side Walk Chalk, Parade Day Rain, which is definitely in my top 5, maybe top 3 most anticipated albums of 2024. I’d have to think about it. But yeah, I’m just gonna come out and say it; I think this song is fucking incredible.

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The bizarre, off-kilter production from Uncommon Nasa fits Pastense’s style beautifully, and his writing had me hooked. The beat kinda sounds like what would play in my head as I’m trying to disarm a bomb. It just sounds really tense. It kinda reminds me of something DOS4GW would make. One thing I realized about Pastense while listening to this song is that his gruff, raspy voice really adds a lot to his music for me. He has one of my favorite voices in Hip Hop right now. He just sounds so goddamn good whenever he’s saying shit. Even if his writing wasn’t as fantastic as it is I would probably still enjoy his music a lot sonically. The entire song is fire, but the closing verse is my favorite part.

The sounds of silence, I stacked stone on stone and planted a rose
Sat back and watched the science unravel and start to understand how energy travel
And everything's reciprocal and when we're actually free nothing sits in the physical
Synergy umbilical, ether linked to lyrical
The most enlightening thought rest at that point where the horizon and the sunset combined
Defined as spiritual, how the light mixed with the mist
Time shapes and shifts, depicted an experience
See sounds in seashells, imagination in an echo
Whistle in a tunnel under the tracks where the trains with faded names pass over
The broken glass under my Nikes mirror the stars at night
The flight of the firefly reveals they move as one like brain synapse
Sparks of light synchronized intricacies unison, but also in the dark and know nothing at all
Space to grow, root dig dirt, mind in the sky, places to go, halos, misunderstood Thanos

The dense writing mixed with Pastense’s gravely delivery over this cold, mechanical production is just perfect. This single just made me even more excited for the album than I already was. I think I’ll enjoy this track even more in the context of the full project. This is one of my favorite songs of the year honestly. Don’t sleep on it. It’s dope as fuck.