Since the fall of NY’s iron fist rule over rap, it seems like every couple of months someone declares, “NY is back.” It’s usually someone trying to push a new rap cat to the Hot 97 crew. Those dudes are aight, but, they always seem to miss one thing — actually reppin’ what it’s like to live in NYC. Cats will rep the drug trade of the city or the club scene but miss out on what the rest of us who aren’t living New Jack City coke dreams are fucking with. Yeah, you gotta have a song about someone getting stomped out with a pair of Timbs but you also need a song that reps Kennedy Fried Chicken.

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire comes with a slow drunken master delivery on Lost In Translation, he drops song after song that combines the grittiness of NY with a soundtrack that weaves in and out of noisy, experimental bangers. These are songs that remind you of the heyday of experiential NY rap while occasionally throwing in random references to Marvel comics and American Ninja to put the whole shit in perspective. Basically, these joints sound like the time you saw a Mexican dude and a Chinese dude arguing in Spanish while a garbage truck backed up and someone drove by blasting the bass line of “Grindin.” You know Thursday night on Flatbush Ave.

With production from cats like El-P and Necro the album knocks pretty hard while eXquire lays out tales of waging a war of attrition with his liver, fucking horrible women, pissing in between subway cars, staying up way too late and eating at off brand chicken places. If that doesn’t encapsulate the life of mad heads in NYC then we’ve finally lost the war against Guilliani’s Disneyfication of the city.