Pink Siifu : BLACK’!ANTIQUE
By the time Pink Siifu’s 2018 album ensley put the Birmingham, Alabama-born rapper on the radar of a wider swath of listeners and earned him critical acclaim, he’d already stacked up a wide variety of self-released EPs and albums showcasing a wildly variant approach. Sonic experiments juxtaposed with soulful lo-fi rap, neo-soul up against sample-laden sound collage—no one stylistic lane defined him. And just when ensley seemed to establish him as a rising underground talent steeped in gauzy production and jazz-laden samples, less than two years later he dropped Negro, a tense and aggressive set of punk and noise that upended perceptions of his music entirely.
Both the chaos of Negro and the gorgeous haziness of ensley are a part of Siifu, disparate as those records might be, and both of them are likewise an essential part of his latest and most overwhelming record, BLACK’!ANTIQUE. Comprising 78 minutes of his most far-reaching material, BLACK’!ANTIQUE offers a glimpse at the whole of Siifu: mournful and menacing, horny and meditative, ferocious and fantastical. Created with the intent of proving that “an artist should be one of one,” Siifu accomplishes just that by likewise showcasing that this one-of-one contains multitudes.
The sprawl of BLACK’!ANTIQUE takes on arc that bends from throttling noise to R&B-tinged trap and lush jazz rap, with appearances from the likes of 454, Ho99o9 and Big Rube, and production from Fatboi Sharif, HiTech and Butcher Brown’s DJ Harrison, to mention just a few names on its eclectic supporting cast. And its first third is no joke, a caustic concoction of blistering industrial rap that gives Death Grips and Dälek a run for their money. The opening title track thunders with a throbbing bass drone off the bat, eventually congealing into a proper song with booming drums and sensory overload sample beds. “ALIVE & DIRECT’!” goes even harder—something like harsh noise big band opera, overwhelming and disorienting, inducing audio vertigo before slowly taking shape as a punishing industrial rap crusher.
The deeper one descends into BLACK’!ANTIQUE, the more accessible it gets, defying the algorithmic wisdom of placing the hit single as track one. The first actual single, “SCREW4LIFE’!RIPJALEN’!”, is in essence a two part-suite, initially soulful and elegiac, opening with the twinkle of Rhodes piano and sound collage, and quickly turning darker and more spectral. “WHOUWITHHO+” is the closest thing to straightforward trap, one of only a handful of songs you can say that about here, an island of relative commercial immediacy in a sea of shape-shifting noise. But things lighten up considerably from there on the beatless ambient rap of “TRANSLATION’!” and the more sensual slow jam, “Girls Fall Out the Sky.”
By the time “LAST ONE ALIVE’!” arrives, the blistering scorch and scrape of the first six songs feels like a distant memory. “ALIVE’!” is soulful, rife with saxophone and chipmunk soul samples, with Siifu taking on a more reflective tone: “me I’m tryna get my life right, real sacrifice.” The journey isn’t quite complete, but by this stage he’s taken the listener a great distance, offering a panoramic view of his aesthetics, instincts and sensibilities, only confirming what he states so clearly in the first track: “I’m a antique—nobody like me.”
Label: Dynamite Hill
Year: 2025
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