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Wilma Archer – Last Sniff (featuring MF Doom)

May 4, 2020 Peter Kimpton
Cover of Wilma Archer’s album A Western Circular

Cover of Wilma Archer’s album A Western Circular

Taken from the British producer and multi-instrumentalist’s album, A Western Circular, this wonderfully eclectic fusion of classical and jazz intertwined and MF Doom’s unmistakable rapping, tells a tale of a New York drug dealer, ducking and diving in a dangerous, insecure world of police surveillance, food and paranoia. But it is this fusion of MF Doom’s delivery and the musical forms, including a simple metronome, that make this an outstandingly vivid and unusual number, something that could very well be part of a film soundtrack.

Coming from Newcastle Upon Tyne and now based in London, Wilma (Will) Archer has variously worked with various artists including Nilüfer Yanya, Sudan Archives, Jessie Ware, Lianne La Havas and Samuel T Herring from Future Islands. His debut album was released under the name Slime, his second as Wilma Vritra. A Western Circular is out on Weird World / Domino. More of Wilma Archer’s work can be found here.

As the clock ticks, he plays the low NY sticks
Pause, deep cover, binocular optics
Only spotted a rice grain on a chopstick
Zoomed out to notice a shiny badge, officer dropkick
Must've been pork fries, spit a chunk of fodder at his partner
As he put the ride in park, I see both eyes staring out the opposite side
On the block as they spied, a fiend glide by
Hotter than July, what a bullshit disguise
Vest bulging through the sides, aviator hides
It's just 5 past lunch rush, last time a fast guy took a dive
Step lively, look alive
The city don't sleep or take naps
And won't easily concede to jake traps
How quick he make scraps through fake daps
Either the trees, the D, or cracks that break snap

Choose your poison, amusing or annoyin'
Just be sure to avoid the blues in them boys 'n 'em
They not toyin', taxpayers help employ 'em
They turn around and treat 'em more worser than the goyim
Soarin' past the krilla to the other wearin' denim Lees
They real dirty, plain clothes enemies
Tend to be pretending in it to end the dudes legacy
With numbers that run concurrent, still it'd be a century
Or end in a heartbeat, them streets damned
For simply just tryna' eat and feed fam
The drug war turned out to be a complete sham
All the while throughout the system, a beat jam
Not my problem, he's here to watch the watchers to the last shift
And get paid good if who ask if
And be ready to blast through the hood, don't let your mask shift
And put that work in overtime to the last sniff

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In experimental, 2020, avant garde, hip hop, jazz, classical Tags songs, song of the day, Wilma Archer, MF Doom, New York
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