New Mind | Old Soul: Chapter IV (Caton Music Group)

KAi Sky Walker is ambitious. In fact, he claims that his marketing strategy has “never been done before”, but it seems to consist of releasing free online mix tapes. How that differs from what every other up-and-coming rapper has been doing is anyone’s guess. Sky Walker is inarguably prolific, though. He’s releasing his New Mind | Old Soul project in nine installments, each with a different theme or feel. He takes his concepts seriously, too. Chapter II, for instance, mixed hip-hop with alternative rock and featured Sky Walker singing over guitar-based arrangements.

For the latest offering, the MC took inspiration from ’90s rap. Clearly not one to do things in half-measures, Sky Walker samples entire verses from some of the game’s giants. The guiding principle seems to be, in the words of Jay Z (as recontextualized in “Napoleon Hill Complex”), “If you gonna cop something, you gotta cop for real.” It’s audacious enough for Sky Walker to sample Biggie Smalls’s “Big Poppa” on “Fly Shit”, but opening the song by paraphrasing Dr. Dre takes a whole other kind of balls.

In the hands of a lesser rapper, this kind of juxtaposition would serve only to highlight one’s own deficiencies, but thankfully Sky Walker brings sufficient lyrical acumen and vocal skills to bear on a track like “Lullaby” to justify appropriating a bit of 2Pac. I don’t know what the next chapter holds, but if it’s anything like this one, it’ll be well worth a listen.