Video Dave is a multi-hyphenate artist originally from Chicago, but now based in Los Angeles. While you might know him as an emcee, you’re just as likely to find him behind the camera or fashioning one-of-a-kind hats. He has been focusing more on his career as an emcee in recent years, with his collaborative effort with Smoke Bonito, Hella Personal Film Festival 2, coming in November of 2020. Since that time, we’ve gotten a couple of singles, but now he’s back and making his debut on Fake Four alongside producer Controller 7 with their new album, ArticulatedTexTiles.

Controller 7 is a producer originally from San Jose, best known for his work with early anticon. projects such as Sole’s Bottle of Humans and Sage Francis’ Personal Journals. Most recently, he’s been working with artists like Buck 65 and Mestizo. He and Video Dave first started working together in earnest in January of 2022, with the idea of just making a single, or maybe an EP. Once they got the ball rolling, however, they just kept going until we got the album before us today. Much of the album was made while Dave was on the road, with Controller 7 just feeding Dave’s inbox with beats based on ideas and discussions they had about music or whatever else crossed their minds. The only real guideline for the project was to make something along the lines of a Prince Paul/Native Tongues project. To that end, I think that Controller 7 really channeled that energy, especially in the way that Paul was able to bring samples from unexpected and obvious places and make them work side by side. What might be a little unexpected is the way in which this album plays more like an old school mixtape, with Controller 7 providing a lot of beats that jut off into different, unexpected directions, while still maintaining a flow, but without concern for crafting typical pop songs. This in turn allows Dave to hop on the mic and free associate and jump from subject to subject and balance some serious subject matter with his understated sense of humor. In fact, at one point he ponders the idea of stream-of-consciousness beats in regard to Controller 7. With this foundation to build from, Video Dave jumps around with his subject matter freely. At any moment you might be having a discussion about hip hop culture, turtles, fear of flying, or aging as a person living a creative life. It’s all on the table and it’s all in conversation. On top of all this, we’ve got a lot of friends jumping in on the fun, with Open Mike Eagle, MC Paul Barnam, Iowa Rockwell, CRAVE, Smoke Bandito, Dessa, STILL RIFT, Ari the Indigo, and Surfboard C all making appearances and adding some great flavor to the project. It also just furthers that mixtape feel as well.

ArticulatedTexTiles is not a typical hip hop release for the year 2023, but it’s a welcome change of pace and a reminder of how much fun it was to pick up random mixtapes back in the day and learn about different producers and emcees in that format. Video Dave makes for a charismatic host and a skilled emcee to carry such a project, and Controller 7 feels free and inspired as he keeps throwing creative beat ideas at you.