Album Review: Spilligion by Spillage Village

Spillage Village, the rap/soul collective, comes together to produce their fourth studio album Spilligion, and just to summarize, the album is art, plain and simple.

It’s one of those albums that takes AT LEAST two listens all the way through to fully appreciate because it has layers. I italicized ‘layers’ because if this blog thing continues, that’ll be something I’ll tend to harp on a lot.

I enjoy music that’s multidimensional. Music that makes you pay serious attention. Music that makes you listen for something new each time. Music that inspires non-musicians, such as myself, to want to make music. That’s what I mean when I say it has layers, and that is what makes this album art.

Spillage Village is a collection of individual artists such as Jordun Bryant, EarthGang (comprised of Doctur Dot and Johnny Venus), Mereba, JID, 6LACK, Benji, and Hollywood JB (left to right). Of course, I have to give them a special shoutout because they’re based out of the city currently running the music game, Atlanta. Don’t @ me. Make sure you visit both pictures in the slideshow.

As I said before, they’re a group that’s made up of individuals.

Duh, that’s what a group means. What I mean is they all have individual careers and they occasionally come together to form Spillage Village. Similar to A$AP MOB or Odd Future. This distinction is very important to the persona of their group and as well as to the album. They all have prominent individual characteristics, but with similar primary principals to contribute to one all-encompassing identity.

Gun to my head, if I had to summarize their vibe in one sentence, in that exact moment, it would be: “Music Loving Authentic Black Hippies.” And even though in this hypothetical my life is on the line, I feel this is an accurate description in which every word is necessary, and I’ll elaborate later on.

I deciphered this simply by listening to the album. When I listen to music, a very important part of the listening process for me is determining their identity and imagining the process of creating the work. What I dreamt up for this album, was a group of really close friends having a thoughtful but fun time in the studio, who all have their own unique talents, smoking a lot of weed and utilizing their creativity, passion, and differences to express their ideas. Very similar to Revenge of the Dreamers III in fact; only in my opinion, this project was better, AND J. Cole didn’t even make an appearance… that says something.

The album is a super creative mosh pit combining tons of different topics, genres, techniques, and culture references. Some of the common themes that I could identify were: the turmoil of 2020 such as the pandemic and social injustices, love/relationships, weed, world cultures, all with an overarching presence of religion intertwined throughout. In my opinion, their take on religion is the most interesting aspect of the album.

Religion

It isn’t by any means gospel, where the objective is to send as much praise as possible, but rather expressing their own views on their relationships with Christ and its relevance in our world today. They made this a very clear motif from the first song, “Spill Vill”, a skit starring Desi Banks, Big Rube, and Kountry Wayne that expresses the corruption in the church.

They make claims such as, “God packed his bags and said bye-bye” and “Only God can judge, but that’s only if he still give a f*#!.” They aren’t shaming religion, but as I said, expressing their own interpretations.

Ultimately, the approach they took to tackle such a gargantuan and interpretive topic such as religion manages to colloquialize it. If you don’t know what ‘colloquialize’ means (I had to look it up myself to make sure), it basically means to make it casual. They don’t speak on the subject as if it’s a divine matter, rather it’s something to have an opinion on, like music for example. Despite this, it’s also very clear that they’re religious people, which I think provides more weight to their claims.

They also incorporate religion in other creative ways. Two that stood out to me the most were the numerous biblical/religious plays on words, as well as combining their faith with weed as shown in “Psalmsing”. This theme is corroborated by the name of the album, “Spilligion.” I might be beating a dead horse here, but it combines their group name with ‘religion’, signifying that it’s their own view of religion.

I talked about religion first because I thought it was made the album unique, but I cannot stress this enough… these folks are musicians… Like they really out here doin’ this music stuff.

It’s hard to believe how many different influences, flows, genres, topics, talents, etc. they fit in a 50-minute project. While they certainly do their fair share of rapping, they also do their fair share of singing as well, and they do it in super creative ways. I would also like to clarify, when they are rapping, they are RAPPING, not trapping. There are no trap beats on the album, every word spoken is in a lyrical context, and there’s minimal autotune. Please do not get me wrong, I am from Atlanta, the home of trap music, I love trap music, I am simply saying, that this, aint that. Trap music has gotten so big and has influenced so many artists that I feel that it’s almost the expectation when an artist is labeled as a rapper. This fact makes me proud to be from Atlanta, but it’s important to remind yourself the difference.

Spilligion is a ~soulful~ album.

I said that they’re Music Loving Authentic Black Hippies, and I’d like to elaborate on that.

“Music Loving”

It’s pretty evident to me when artists listen to music beyond their own genre. There are several examples of outside genre influences such as Jazz, Soul, Folk, Alternative, but fortunately not Pop. Not a big fan of pop music, but we’re not getting into that, this article is already too long. It’s not only in the instrumentals but also in their voices, rhythms, and theatrics. There’s no song that’s similar to another, which does a wonderful job of boasting a strong musical repertoire. The instrumentals have a key emphasis on real instruments, but are combined with modern day musical engineering, making for some really cool beats.

“Authenticity”

Honestly, it’s hard for me to explain this claim, but I promise you, if you listen, you’ll feel me, I know you will. A couple things I will say though, you can tell they had a lot fun making this project, as well as that they enjoy each other’s company. The group originated in college and it’s their fourth project, they have chemistry to say the least. This was beautifully displayed in their Tiny Desk Concert, and I recommend watching that as well.

They also didn’t add many features, and especially not any big-name features.

I’m suuure they could’ve gotten J. Cole on there, which would’ve significantly increased their sales, but they didn’t, and I think this speaks to their authenticity. However, they did include Chance the Rapper, but I’m honestly not mad at that. Chance appeared on “Judas”, and he was good fit for the song, definitely not forced.

“Black Hippies”

Ok, so the description I gave for them was off the top of my head, so this may not be the beeest description, but hopefully the explanation will help. Each of the members has a super powerful black presence that you can instantly pick up from their music, but it was further verified by their music videos and performances. They all rock traditional black hair styles, black clothing, they speak on pressing black issues, and they originally began at Hampton University, a historically black university. I added the description of hippie because they turn back the clock for me. They give me a 60s/70s throwback vibe, and they speak about smoking weed. That makes sense… right?

Other things I like about this album are the amount of people on it. Some of the songs have 4+ people, and I looove that. Like YES, give me a variety talent, make it difficult for me to decide who went the hardest. Music is a blessing, and it has the opportunity that a lot of passions do not, collaboration. For example, I run track, an individual sport. Of course I respect the solo artist, but personally I believe a blessing like this should be shared with others. I’m ranting but this is a very essential element to the album, so you can say it was a very essential rant.

I also like that they have some cool skits and outros that also tie into the theme. This is what makes an album feel like an album, and not just a collection of songs. There was a musical outro on “Baptize” and “End of Daze”, and on the first listen those were my favorite parts of album. I love stuff like that, and I think that’s just another example of them showing off their musical bag. In addition to this, there are currently three music videos released off of this album and I recommend those as well.

But yeah… to wrap it all up there are a lot of good things going on this album. It’s a something-for-everyone project and they did a phenomenal job displaying their array of artistic talent. As I mentioned, this is the fourth project released by the group and I will certainly be tapping into the ones prior as well as hopefully ones in the future.

If you’ve read up until this point, I really appreciate you, and you’re a real one. Definitely let me know if you listened, what you think, and even what you thought of this article. There will be a little feedback box below for you to do so if you wish. I apologize for the wordiness, but when artists display this much passion in their music, it’s my duty to match their passion in my review. That being said, I hope I can bring at least a little attention to this project because they really deserve it.

P.S.

JID is in line to succeed J. Cole as the best lyricist in the game, and Dreamville is currently the second-best label. Don’t @ me.

P.P.S.

Mereba was a former student in my mom’s voice studio at Spelman College.

Favorite Songs (no order)                  

• Baptize
• PsalmSing
• Ea’alah (Family)
• Mecca
• Cupid
• End of Daze
• Hapi
• The Entire Album

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