Protextor is an artist originally from Iowa, but largely associated with Austin due to the fact that his career took off after he moved there in 2008, and then co-founded Austin Mic Exchange in 2012. However, after AMX came to a close in 2017, Protextor found himself at a bit of a crossroads, and he started to look to different forms of art, such as comedy and filmmaking, and even relocated to Los Angeles when COVID hit. However, when a love of hip hop is deeply embedded within you, you can only do other things for so long before that urge will bring you back in. So, seven years after his last album, American Neon, Protextor has finally come back with a new hip hop album, Gonzo Recites Poetry While Defusing a Bomb.

Bird Peterson is an Austin producer who has been putting out music for about fifteen years, and among other things co-founded Cream Dream Records with Boom Baptist. He originally approached Protextor seven years ago about working with a rap group he was part of, but the project never came to fruition. However, Protextor found the beats really inventive and exciting, and when he finally found himself in the right headspace to start working on an album again, he knew that Peterson’s production had to be a key piece of the project. In listening to the album, you can see why Protextor felt this way. There is this beautiful balance to Peterson’s beats, where they are both weird and accessible at the same time. There are all of these strange, unexpected elements that feel like they shouldn’t work, but they always end up not just working, but coming together in a way that just completely slaps. It’s this way in which Peterson marries all of these different influences and styles of music under the umbrella of hip hop that serves as perfect musical jumping off point for Protextor.

Taking both the titular “Gonzo” and the memory of his late aunt, Debbie (the weird, cool aunt), as inspiration, Protextor sought out to blur the lines between “low” and “high” art on the album, finding value in all of it as long as it resonates with you emotionally. This could be some really sophisticated lyrics about socio-economic politics, or it could be raps about how the Ninja Turles rule, the point is that it is all valid and on the table with this album. Gonzo opens with “Cool Like U,” which really gets at the politics of trying to navigate a “creative” city like Austin or Los Angeles, where it always feels like someone else more privileged and more “cool” is there to one-up your accomplishments. From there, we touch on a variety of subject matter, like Protextor’s dismantling of hustle culture with “Hustle,” featuring Fat Mike. They take apart the idea that we often get sold on, that you just have to want it and work hard enough for it and you’ll get it, when in fact there are systemic obstacles designed to keep you in place. One of the real gems of the album, though, is “Whoopi Goldberg,” a song that surprisingly doesn’t use the titular entertainer as a metaphor or jumping off point, but instead just pays tribute to the EGOT winner in a very genuine manner, all while making a hip hop song that absolutely bumps. Seriously, the number of times I’ve caught myself just rhyming, “Whoopi Whoopi Goldberg,” as I’m walking is not something I expected to happen. It should also be mentioned that Protextor is an artist that loves to collaborate, and we get some stellar appearances from Frankie Jax No Mad, Secret Levels, Fat Mike, Kydd Jones, and Chucky BLK, who are all used to great effect to bring a different style and energy to each track and bring the whole project up a notch.

When you take seven years between albums, you need to make sure you do everything right when you come back. Protextor not only did that, he found a way to elevate all of the things that made him great as an artist in the course of making Gonzo. Bird Peterson is a perfect match on the beats, and Protextor reached out to some emcees that understood the assignment and came correct with their verses. More than all of this, Protextor found inspiration and perspective that drove the project, throwing out preconceived notions of “low” and “high” art and just making the weird rap that fits him to a tee.