This beat goes HARD. I mean, it goes “12 gauge shotgun to the teeth” hard. This song comes from SCALE$, a very undiscovered rapper who has teamed up with a legion of producers in order to release his first EP, 495 Loss Prevention. Given that he is still making his way up in terms of notoriety, details about SCALE$ are hard to come by. I suspect that he hails from the USA due to the accent on his vocals and the wealth of US producers and rappers that he collaborates with. For example, Local, the featured artist in this track and fellow HAF Mafia member, is a California native. But 495 is featured prominently on SCALE$’s work and social media which as far as I can tell only corresponds heavily with one of Moscow’s area codes.
This song was produced by PULSE, a German producer who specializes in trap. In fact, given that SCALE$ worked with so many different producers on this debut album, each song has a distinctly different flavor. Additionally, this song brings in Local for the second verse for a very cool sound. It sounds like his contribution harmonizes with either himself or SCALE$. Either way, it gives the second half of the song a really cool sound.
I’m interested to see if SCALE$ partners with a specific producer for the long haul or continues to do collaborations. The current arrangement is practically the reverse of what we normally see in electronic music. In those cases, the producer typically takes ownership of the song and feature multiple vocalists. But in this instance, SCALE$ is putting his stamp on these songs and letting the producers take a back seat. For rap this isn’t horrible uncommon as the vocals are considered the trademark-able element.
