"Anesthesia" is the temporary state of unconsciousness. Anesthesia is the story of a man who chose hustling over paying dues at an office job. Anesthesia is the new solo album from Chicago's Verbal Kent. It's a journey of a son becoming a father, a meditation about how a life of drug abuse and anger can become virtue and realization, a story of a man who learns the power of forgiveness.
These are 12 parables that bang so hard they can't be forgotten. Over booming rugged drums, the rapper named after a Usual Suspect does the extraordinary. He supplies agile rapid-fire bars filled with clever wordplay. Careful reflections of reckless days-and what it means to repent for past sins. Trotting out perhaps the deepest roster of collaborators that he's yet assembled, beats thump from Oh No, Marco Polo, Kaz1, and Kent's partner in Ugly Heroes, Apollo Brown. On "Suit Case Switch," Freddie Gibbs pops up to play the Jules Winfield to Kent's Vincent Vega. Other appearances blast from Skyzoo, Torae, and Red Pill.
This is as raw as your throat after chain-smoking all night. But there's the level of sophistication that can only come from someone who has dominated a thousand ciphers, spent innumerable hours in the booth, and perfected the art. And on Anesthesia, he's implemented those gifts to go deeper-to seek the answers that elude us in our day-to-day existence. This is a quest for relief in the physical and the mental. It's rooted in the questions that arise when you start to search. What do we call on to blanket our fears and dark secrets? How can we avoid feeling something that can lead to confrontation?
During the creation of this album, Kent found himself facing this dilemma. In his own words: "What do I as a writer choose to write about, and why? Were there life moments and events that I had blocked? More importantly, what was behind the moments I chose to discuss that I didn't block? How many different lives have I lived? How honest was I with myself while wearing so many hats?"
It's a poignant album about the process of uncovering. It's told in his own way and in his own order. It's all the pain without the pain medication. Songs that discover universal truths through personal revelations. Verbal Kent breaks down layer after layer, learning from his own expressions, turning permanent scars into timeless music.
