Recommended to us by Kamal, it’s our second run in with Daveed Diggs and co.

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[6.88]

Nortey Dowuona: Daveed is such a great writer. Just…listen. I can’t describe this. Just listen.
[10]

Tim de Reuse: Splendor and Misery is now the second-most out-there story that Daveed Diggs has narrated recently, I guess. But that was a full album with room to stretch out and poke at various facets of its relatively simple narrative; this one song tries to fit twice as many story beats into five scant minutes. It’s corny as hell, too — and that’s fine! The problem is that it spends way too much time hurrying through exposition and so little on using this outlandish setting to get at some kind of thematic center. Diggs is as lovely as always when he finally gets going, and the creeping build in intensity is a neat gimmick, but I can’t shake the feeling that this would’ve been more affecting if they’d just resisted the urge to explain everything and let the imagery unnerve us. 
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: The legacy of Drexciya is a problematic one, more problematic than many of those who tip the hat like to admit. While conceptually, the group has enjoyed a benevolent status due to such a singular vision and imagination, sonically they’ve become almost fetishized and weaponized against their peers. I don’t think Gerald Donald necessarily minds his canonization, but do you think he occasionally wonders how his music is treated with a greater reverence than the works of some of his peers and influences? “The Deep” is funny to me because its themes, design and concept are so indebted to the aquatic afro-futurism of Drexciya. Granted, there are tips of the hat in approach here by Clipping. to as disparate a palette of taste as Cash Money, Outkast, and even label-mates Shabazz Palaces, but their humor is a studious one that betrays a certain self-serious stiffness. Their aquatic pursuits don’t have the specular Narcissal navel-gazing of Hendrix or A.R. Kane, or the tricknowledgery of George Clinton or CVE’s NGA Fsh but instead end up at a series of re-enactment through tribute pieces to fantasies, turning to metaphors as totems of truth. Its competency in connecting legacies over such formal threads in so many ways makes it seem as if they’ve failed to consider how to be themselves more than their inspirations for the day.
[4]

Iain Mew: A story told in a series of increasingly frenzied impressionistic parts, complete with chapter breaks. The build works better musically than narratively but I was on side as soon as they gave a delicious new turn to the words “started from the bottom.” And by the time they bring in the Final Fantasy VII arpeggios, the deep lost world feel is irresistable.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: A mighty impressive bit of performance poetry, and I don’t mean that as an insult; a really good piece of poetry recital can be utterly spellbinding. This is definitely compelling, but I find the actual music a bit of a turn-off and a distraction, detracting from Daveed Diggs’ commanding reading.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I feel uncomfortable writing about this — like how “Formation” was for, by and about Black Women, Clipping’s genius Afrofuturist production, leaning through Butler and Delaney, arguing for a timeless elliptic black time, claims hip-hop as originating on the middle passage, saying that the politics of dance was a way not to drown. Literally drown, the ships bells, the sound of water (this is the motion of sound on water), the samples of submarine noise and that hint of a trap beat — made more so by the hopeful possibility of surfacing. 
[10]

Alfred Soto: A better lecture than as a piece of music, even musique concrète 
[4]

Will Adams: “The Deep” rises to the surface like leveling up, each verse faster than the previous, intercut with cutscenes that set the sci-fi atmosphere. The payoff comes in the land level, a romp through a desolate wasteland. Our narrator Daveed Diggs is with us the whole way, guiding with a firm hand that lets us take in the beauty of the surroundings while also making sure we’re paying attention to the story.
[7]