ECID

ECID

Ecid's MySpace page is the first thing that comes up when you Google his name, but the third entry might as well be about his music, too—it's a site devoted to an engineering research project titled "Embracing Complexity in Design." In a local rap scene largely attuned to everyman personae, battle-rap refinement, and indie-punk crossover, Ecid's one of the few Twin Cities MCs to go as far as the almost confrontationally abrasive coastal underground rap mainstays on Anticon and Definitive Jux.

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• Eminem
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But Ecid's design isn't too complex to obscure the meaning of his lyrics, the frustration and disillusionment of which cut closer than a more complacent listener might be comfortable with. "If hip hop was really dead there'd be nobody complaining about it," he cracks derisively in "Crook Cologne." That combination of halfway-idealism and pragmatic cynicism carries over into his disappointment with an unattainable Hollywood-style future in "Re-Seeding Skyline" ("I think I can speak for every single one of us/When I say we've waited long enough for hovering BMWs"), the pitfalls of theology, science, and identity politics in "What Are You Gonna Be for Halloween?" (the chorus: "Okay, I get it/Let's pretend to be somebody else"), and his own shaky psyche in "Moodswing Posterchild".

Production-wise, Economy Size goDD Costume is all minor-key bass, claustrophobic drums, and zombie-film atmospherics, with Ecid's breathlessly manic voice—ranging from a low, seething snarl to an Eminem harangue minus the clownishness—providing the narrative. It's an album worth listening to mostly during those times when you're fucked-up and anxious, and wondering if there's anyone else on that same wavelength.