Savannah rapper Dope KNife re-establishes himself with “The Dope One”

The cover of Kedrick Mack’s (AKA Dope KNife) latest album, “The Dope One,” features a painting by Savannah’s folk portraitist Panhandle Slim with the quote, “When the world ends and the missiles start to fly, the only thing left will be cockroaches and Dope Knife.”

Panhandle Slim tends to paint icons and important social figures, and Mack certainly fits the criteria of a crucial Savannah hip-hop mainstay. Since co-founding the Dope Sandwich record label and collective in the mid-2000s, Dope KNife has been an indelible presence in the Savannah hip-hop scene.

However, like the cockroaches that will survive the apocalypse with him, Mack has tended to operate in the underground.

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“The Dope One” is poised to reintroduce Dope KNife to a new generation of listeners that may not be familiar with the work he has been producing for almost two decades. To that effect, Mack has produced his most “mainstream” and accessible album yet, one full of trunk rattling bass, trap beats, and numerous features.

Mack was inspired to experiment with sounds more modern than his usual old school gritty boom-bap style when the Youtube channel Dead End Hip Hop reviewed his 2018 album, “Things Got Worse.”

“One of the things they said about my last album is that it has that underground sound,” recalled Mack. “For the last four years that comment has been [expletive] with me. I’ve been trying to decide if that underground sound that they were talking about — I as the person who made it knows what they’re talking about — is that an aesthetic choice or is that just the limitations of recording?”

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Mack asked himself, “If I wanted to, could I make something like Drake does?”

Mack has been working on “The Dope One” for three years and the results sound like the culmination of his development as an artist.

“I try to make each album seem like they’re building off of what the last one did, but this one definitely has a magnum opus vibe to it,” said Mack.

The eclectic collection of bangers has the effect of making the album seem like a greatest hits compilation. “This is an experiment in trying to push individual songs as opposed to pushing myself as an act,” said Mack. “There is definitely something on the album you might want to put on a playlist.

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“It’s like a reversed engineered thing. I’m being experimental for me, but being experimental for me is trying to do more mainstream [expletive]. That’s the contradiction of the album. It’s an experimental mainstream rap album.”

The most surprising experiments involve Mack’s use of trap beats, which many hip hop heads find tired or simplistic. But Mack makes the point that it’s not the beats, but the rapper.

“In my ilk of the hip hop thing there’s a stigma about trap beats or trap music from a craft perspective,” said Mack. “Rappers like me tend to look down on trap stuff a bit and not really appreciate the stuff you can do with it, so I wanted to show that ‘trap’ doesn’t mean ‘simple.’ I don’t think that just because something is trap or from the trap neck of the woods that it necessarily has to be tamed or dumbed down in terms of the technical aspect of it. When I hear rappers complain all the time about trap not really being the best example of rap, for me it’s like, ‘Well, what trap are you listening to?’ There’s lots of rappers that are rapping over trap beats that are good, and I’d even argue that Run the Jewels, most of there’ instrumentals are trap instrumentals, and they’re killing it on that.”

“I could understand how someone who is on some hardcore hip hop could listen to 2 Chainz and not think that he is that good, technically, as a rapper. If you know how to rap and you’re listening to what he’s doing, you realize he’s doing that on purpose.”

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Mack uses another offbeat analogy.

“If you listen to Weird Al, you know that Weird Al is actually a musician and everything is an actual choice he is making for it to sound that way. Whether that fits your taste or not is a completely different story, but you’re in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. That’s how I feel about trap music and why it should not necessarily be dismissed by old, dusty hip hop guys.”

“The Dope One” features a host of guest rappers including his “Waiting on Reparations” podcast co-host Linqua Franca, Genevieve, Ceschi, Soultru, and Jarv.

One stand out track, “Take iT or Leave It” features incendiary bars from LGBTQ+ rappers Chris Conde and K-Death.

“We didn’t even know what the song was going to be about,” Mack said of recording the track. “They thought it was going to be political, some sort of statement, and I was like, ‘Nah, man. Let’s just rap like we were battling.’ Just all of us being on it was a statement. Chris went in and was really self-conscious like, ‘Man, Is my verse too gay?’ Not only is it perfect, I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“I think I’ll whip it out on Pride month next year,” Mack added with a laugh.

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Somehow “The Dope One” feels like both Dope KNife’s most personal album, with multiple references to being Liberian, and his least personal at the same time.

“This is for me a pretty impersonal album,” said Mack. “Especially since I didn’t make the first batch of songs with the intention of it being an album. I was really just trying to make jams. I didn’t really feel like the album had any personal statement to it, but I guess when you listen to everything together it does feel oddly personal, even with all the features.”

“The Dope One” is out on Friday on all platforms, and is getting a vinyl and CD release from the indie label Fake Four Records. To celebrate the new record, Dope KNife is throwing a release party at El Rocko Lounge featuring an exhibition of art inspired by each of the album’s tracks and painted by artists like Enoch Vaughn, Mariah Ringhoff, and Ted Chou.

“I knew I wanted it to have a tie-in with art, and for it to be this art/music experience,” said Mack.

Hopefully this is the record that breaks Dope KNife out of the underground and introduces him to a slew of new fans.

Mack said, “I fell pretty confident that if 100,000 people heard the album at the same time, at least 40,000 of then would be like, “I love that. Where can I get more of it?’ I’m trying to get it out to those people.”

“I just want people to listen. Just listen.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA concerts: Rapper Dope KNife releases The Dope One album