Blue Iverson - Hotep

Pitchfork 75

An interview with Dean Blunt is a rare enough opportunity that you can hardly read one without the fact first being pointed out. If he’s not called “elusive” or “press-shy,” he’s a “prankster,” “piss-taker,” or “provocateur.” As he said in one such piece early last year, “British [people] hate feeling like they have egg on their faces… They’re quick to sew a jester’s hat.” All of which is to say that the Londoner’s public persona has long preceded him. This is no doubt because of the many, largely unanswered questions raised by Hype Williams, Blunt’s defunct avant-pop duo with Inga Copeland, and his striking, inimitable solo work in music and art. And because, well, who isn’t intrigued by a good riddle?

Two albums released under the stage name Dean Blunt, 2013’s The Redeemer and 2014’s Black Metal, teased anyone hoping to catch a glimpse behind the curtain. They sounded sensitive and confessional in a way that Hype Williams hadn’t, and the music was far more clear-headed, sometimes even catchy. But to anyone hearing the music as a recluse letting his guard down and baring his soul, Blunt would have likely said they’re missing the point. Outsiders may see him as a fascinating figure—a mercurial, enigmatic, capital-A Artist—but it takes a true narcissist to see yourself that way. Blunt soon began backstepping. He focused on releasing knotty, stream-of-consciousness mixtapes through anonymous YouTube accounts and obscure websites. By the time of his next official album in 2016, Babyfather’s BBF Hosted by DJ Escrow, Dean Blunt the performer was obfuscated by unknown aliases, vocal effects, and literal smoke. Now, under the name Blue Iverson, his ego has conceded the spotlight entirely.

Released as a free stream and download, like Blunt’s many online mixtapes, Hotep is 20 minutes of low-key, free-flowing vignettes made largely with guitars, keys, and samples. Most songs are instrumental, and the few vocals that appear are female, presumably from Jenna of “Jenna’s Interlude.” Though the reserved grooves running through Hotep aren’t completely alien to Blunt’s catalog, they are more cohesive and traditional than anything else he’s done. It wouldn’t be a Blunt record without a couple unconventional twists, but this is largely “rhythm and blues” boiled down to its original definition: jazzy, soulful blues music with a heavy beat.

Blunt has plenty to say about R&B and its fall in popular culture beneath the “hyper-masculinity” of hip-hop, but you won’t hear about it on Hotep. The hope, it would seem, is that you’ll feel it. The absence of an overt male presence feels intentional; the disjointed femininity of “Brown Grrrl” feels consciously unsettling. In the stunning closer, “Fake Loathe,” Jenna breaks out over the music’s silky bounce, singing, “Oh, you don’t know what you do to me.” Her words feel more deeply pained than lovelorn. Lauryn Hill’s image—taken from her career-defining album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill—adorns the cover like a religious icon. Indeed, she serves as Blunt’s inspirational and moral North Star on Hotep, an album that challenges male supremacy with whispers and negative space.

Hotep’s quiet querying is most effective, however, because Blunt has given his would-be codebreakers a record that doesn’t resemble a question mark. There’s nothing to decipher in “Coy Boy”’s bluesy guitar solo, and a song as warm and groovy as “Soulseek” couldn’t be more immediately accessible. The rickety, good-times funk of “Hush Money” wants only to join whatever party it can, even if its brief boogie will leave dancers asking why the music stopped so soon. But first, Blunt seems to say, more important answers are needed in the everyday world, where everyday issues must be interrogated by everyday people. “We’ve got to question everything we’ve been told about us being black,” he explained to a panel late last year. “There’s a lot of homophobia, there’s a lot of dominance in it… Within the black movement there’s a lot of dominance over women...That has to be addressed first.” In the meantime, Blunt’s music can speak for itself.