Isaiah Rashad’s “The House is Burning,” released July 30, 2021. Album Cover Art via Pitchfork.
Isaiah Rashad is a little-known hip-hop artist born right down the mountain in Chattanooga. He lived a very interesting childhood, dealing with multiple father-figures, and an even more interesting faith, which included Christianity and Islamic nationalist movements. He once even aspired to be a preacher.
Rashad began rapping at a young age and is now one of the biggest hip-hop artists to come out of Tennessee. I love his music for the raw feelings and emotions developed within. Rashad gives the listener a smooth canvas to reflect their own emotions on in his latest album, “The House is Burning.”
“The House is Burning” is a smooth listen. It is my favorite of his albums due to the light, airy nature of the music. The album does a great job of toeing the line between punk, anti-intuitive sounds, and pleasing, enjoyable melodies. Some listeners may find it hard to grasp some of the sounds in the album because this isn’t your classic “three verses with a chorus after each” type of music. However, this is one of my favorite albums to go through with some friends in the car. On the two occasions I have introduced someone to this, both commented on how pleasing the music sounded: “A lot better than all of your other music, Aidan.”
The album is very dynamic. Listen to it from top to bottom. Rashad does a good job at throwing some high-energy bangers at the listener to hook them, and then showcasing his skills in R&B like tempos and tunes in the back half of the album. For instance, a song like “From the Garden,” the second track, has a very explosive beat and high energy, repetitive vocals intended to get the listener’s head moving a bit.
We soon transition into “Claymore,” switching the listen up by a lot. This song has a soft lullaby of a hook, coupled with a beautiful instrumental, calming you into a nice, peaceful state that you will stay in for the rest of the album. The song is rated as explicit on Spotify due to drug slang, but is otherwise a fairly clean listen.
Lyrically, “The House is Burning” may be difficult for some listeners. Oddly, Rashad flips between having and not having a focus on the lyrics. This may catch a lot of listeners off guard who may be used to clear, enunciated vocals with proper alliteration and followable rhyme schemes. This is no “God’s Plan,” with easy to hear lyrics and a predictable rhyme scheme (eight lines that all rhyme with “me”). Rashad speaks in a much more free-form way, even allowing some lyrics to be mumbled off. He is trying to get you to feel something, and maybe a beat and a mood delivers that a lot better than any lyric he could give you. Similar to a song like “No Surprises” by Radiohead, the mumbly tone is a tool used to influence the mood.
A typical mainstream, billboard hot 100 music listener has probably never heard of something like this, and it may catch them off guard—which I think is a good thing. I really feel like the goal of this album was to make art, not to sell albums or generate streams. No songs on this album have surpassed 90 million streams, and Rashad is currently sitting under 5 million Spotify monthly listeners, which is really surprising for an artist who is signed to the same production label as huge mainstream artists like Kendrick Lamar and SZA.
I do not believe that this album is a perfect album—like any album, it has its flaws. I think “Lay Wit Ya” is a skip—it’s just a genuinely annoying track for me, with an unnecessary feature, and Rashad getting a little too far out of his expertise. There are some lyrical low points on some songs, and some subject matter definitely isn’t for me.
“The House is Burning” delivers on everything it promises. If you are bored of your music or just want to check out something new, I highly recommend giving it a listen. It’s super cool to hear something new and you might really enjoy it, especially if you listen to a lot of rap music already. If you are feeling sad or frustrated and want something to reflect on some emotions with, go ahead and give it a listen.