Mr. Basista

British rapper Mr. Basista is all about the jokes, from the subject matter of his songs to the silly one-liners he drops. This is most evident early on with "Bait King,” where Basista brags about wearing a sheepskin suit and snakeskin boots to an RSPCA meeting, suggests a raffle to win your weight in gin at AA, asks to bring his cake into a Weight Watchers meeting and claims to be "the fart in your spacesuit.” But unlike most comedic rappers, Basista opts for a selection of abstract, leftfield, self-produced beats. His typical mid-tempo drums take a back seat to the jazz, blues, rock and soul samples he often employs, when he’s not playing with spacey effects, static, noise and other glitch-hop sounds. Basista also loves false stops within songs (sometimes annoyingly so) and connects his tracks with a nearly flawless flow, occasionally with the inclusion of instrumental interludes. His flow fluctuates between on-beat rapping and a sort of spoken word storytelling style, with the former resulting in the best songs ("Thunk,” "Bait King,” "Booda” and his bonus freestyle medley) and the latter sometimes ending up a little muffled, although his accent may be accentuating this problem. While not always an easy, or enjoyable, listen, Thunk is an interesting hybrid and a rare combination of experimentation and humour.