Official Burnt Toast – Money As Debt

Bending Tradition

Ever since rap music’s relatively recent emergence in the mainstream, it can be easy to forget the form has roots that stretch even further back before DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambattaa and “The Message.” In many ways, wordsmiths like Nas, Black Thought or Ghostface Killah share more commonalities with the storied tradition of African American poetry than the party-ready punchlines of hip-hop’s heyday. Money As Debt—a two-song single from East London three-piece Official Burnt Toast—serves as a direct reminder of rap’s poetic precursors.

Vocalist/drummer Adrian Lawrence possesses a timbre and cadence that hovers somewhere between Gil Scott-Heron, the proto-rap of Last Poets and Nuyorican Cafe founder Miguel Piñero. On the scathing “Money As Debt,” Lawrence tackles the Western world’s debt based economy, one that’s “more despotic than monarchy / More insular than autocracy / More selfish than bureaucracy.” His refrain is a lament: “We all need a credit card, mortgage and a yard,” before explaining how “the Money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudice of the people, and their need to borrow.” Lawrence is far less concerned with rhyme schemes and clever turns of phrase than he is with getting his message out—though it doesn’t stop him from pulling out burners like “a cartel prints what we earn / We’re buried in credit cards like ashes in an urn.”

“Hi Time” is a significantly mellower affair, featuring vibraphone hits that glide over Patrick Luke and Abrar Hafiz’s dueling, wobbling basses and live boom-bap drums. Lawrence takes a more meditative turn, reflecting on cannabis and creative processes, in ways both unique and surely familiar to others who engage in such activities. “Cuz this is how we do / Cuz this is how we do,” he states, almost wearily, before describing DJ’s who “cut up veggies” while “emcees add eye-of-newt.” Later, he finds “words and phrases he can’t find sober,” letting a “fountain pen scratch the page like skin against a nettle.” It’s all a bit strange and beautiful; simultaneously familiar and alien.

Both “Money as Debt” and “Hi Time” come from Official Burnt Toast’s debut Tubs ‘N’ Tongue-Fu. If these songs are any indication, there are plenty more riches to be found in their full-length. Lawrence and crew demonstrate that honoring the past and looking toward the future are not mutually exclusive, and that rap need not be constrained by complex rhyme schemes to evoke majesty.