Chilltown rapper Constant Flow explores "The Price of Paradise" with new album
By D. Menzies
You’re in paradise, and as Chilltown rapper Constant Flow says, “It’s like being in Cloud City,” a place above the rest of the world. “Paradise.” What does it take to be there, and what does it take from you?
Questions like that loom large on “The Price of Paradise," the latest album from CF (aka Nelson M).
For those who may not know, Chilltown is a nickname for Jersey City (JC) — which has become a paradise for various real estate interests and anyone with cultural capital (generational or relative wealth, in particular) looking for their affiliate Manhattan, which some of it overlooks.
“Corpse,” the album’s first track, sets a high bar. This is only in part because of the clever wordplay that utilizes “set,” like so: “Let’s go deep and get you highly up … set.”
Thematically the song is about hitting the marks on a checklist of things someone needs before they step out. In addition to establishing a sort of camaraderie to those who can relate to the island of misfit toys (per his reference, tis the season), CF explores being complete — regret-free enough to feel like should that corpse state come he’s checked everything off the list; and that means a commitment to being alive.
It’s also the dissection of a relationship, CF told Chilltown Blues. “I’m dissecting … This is the price of the idea of wanting to live blissfully with someone — that’s the price of paradise.”
It took a few listens for anything else on the roughly half-hour album to sink in as being able to match “Corpse” — the combination of CF’s delivery and Speedy Babyy’s production, and the shift to spoken word at the end, leaves that strong of an impression — but that happens shortly thereafter on songs that take a few listens to unpack because of the many ideas packed into their shorter duration.
“Hillz” is a good example of that, with its rapid-fire delivery and pop culture references. In the song, CF acknowledges those who died on what can be thought of as hills before they were paved over. In a way, he revisits a theme from “Ghetto Mermaid,” on a previous album, “Surus.”
Where is there to go when everyone wants a house on the proverbial hill, and “everyone” is people with what we’ll call particularly great credit scores? (Some people even want a house in JC’s proverbial Hill, but not the figures in “Ghetto Mermaid,” who can’t afford to consider anything else but the sea.)
“Hillz” is a little more of a fever dream where it’s possible to escape somewhere. It relates to the album cover, with its picture taken in a place considered a tropical paradise
“My mother’s family moved from a town named Grito de Lares, where the revolutionary Puerto Ricans tried to rebel against the Spaniards,” CF says. “So my family’s connected to that town. … I wanted to explain to people the beauty of the hills and the price of paradise people have to pay to maintain their identity — specifically the indigenous types and the Africans and the Sephardic Jews because they would not be accepted in the main coastal areas where the main population was at because of who they are. They were willing to live away from where the resources were easy to access because they wanted to keep their identity.”
“… Like misfits toys. Damn it, I guess Santa forgot about us.” — CF on “Corpse”
There’s a few themes interwoven throughout the album. There’s the aforementioned, and there’s also the serpentine natures of the city and the state and the people washing over it; and life and death —specifically trying to stay motivated to live as someone who is a little too aware of everything.
There’s also doing that via what CF has referred to as ‘90s Nel, with that era’s energy and some of the vernacular. It’s sprinkled throughout the album, but “Rage Virus” feels like a particularly good example of that — as the setting for ’90s hip hop was often post-Reagan red-lined, apocalyptic area. Here, the song focuses on a guy in a gated community, CF says, who realizes he’s hardly among angels.
“Surprise Party” feels like it’s about the build up to its last lines, which are delivered like a good punchline on a song that begs the question: who wants to party with you anyway? It’s also about dealing with wanting to celebrate and be celebrated.
“Blast Radius” is about letting some of the people who make your life harder do that to themselves, as that would often seem to be inevitable.
With “Machine City,” another highlight, CF imagines engineers who work on favelas that welcome everyone. In part, because he’s well-read, '“while most self-medicate to deal with themselves, cause they feel dead, I feel alive ...”
Or at least he does before he becomes part of machine city in some way.
“Seraphim” is a bookend to “Corpse,” CF says. With a horn-inflected soundscape, it builds on a metaphor for what something actually is via angels — the way they’re commonly portrayed in pop culture versus the myriad-eyed beings an accurate depiction of their biblical description would look like. But it’s here ’90s Nel resurfaces with a realization he maybe blinded by something that’s much more one-dimensional.
On “CODA,” which features Rian or Duece, CF raps about qualifying for some of contemporary standards of “success” but not being able to benefit from it on a material level; he also raps about how social media clout is “new school crack.”
The song’s second half belongs to Rian or Duece, who energetically takes the torch with words that also speak to minimizing small minds as they imitate a path laced with real pain.
If that’s the landscape, what can you do but ground yourself in a sense of purpose?
Check out “The Price of Parade” on Bandcamp or wherever you stream your music.
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