Bough by Deca and Dealz Is Your Next Favorite Hip-Hop Album

Hip-hop duos have always produced some of the genre's most exciting, era-defining albums. Such legendary two-pieces as Eric B and Rakim, OutKast, Black Star and Run the Jewels (and plenty of others) all shook the rap world and left their mark.

But heads up, Denver heads: There's a new team-up album with local roots that deserves your immediate attention. That full-length is the soulful, irresistible Bough from Deca and Dealz, two artists as intertwined with the Mile High City as their respective skills are on the album.

Deca is the lyricist, the poet, movie buff and philosopher. Dealz is the beat-maker, magician and mad scientist in the lab. Deca was born here, growing up around fellow aspiring graffiti artists and rappers before relocating to New York City, while his counterpart came to Denver as an adolescent and currently maintains a home base and studio in the city. They're both producers by trade, and this is one of the first times Deca (who usually make his own beats) has been inspired to rap over someone else's work.

"I usually produce most of my albums, so it's amazing to just get beats that I've never heard before, because the inspiration strikes in a way different way," Deca says. "When you've never heard something and you listen to it for the first time, it's like the ideas immediately start coming — whereas when I'm sitting at home in the studio and working on a beat for two days straight and start to put a pen to paper, I've already heard it hundreds and hundreds of times."
Even more than enjoying the strange, he feels he's found a kindred spirit in the ultra-productive Dealz. "I haven't met a lot of producers [where I'm] drawn to their production like I'm drawn to Dealz. ... We just naturally work really well together and have similar sensibilities as far as the stuff we like," he explains.

That "stuff" prominently includes spare, head-nodding beats and mournful horns as well as a ton of well-placed samples. From the opening title track, Deca's intricate wordplay — which is relentlessly brilliant — is cushioned and complemented by Dealz's textures, often inflected by flavors of jazz and psychedelia that conjure up ghosts of the ’60s and ’70s. It's a perfect match for Deca's raps, which aren't just smart — they also have all the heady, wordy punch of the East Coast ’90s hip-hop heyday. And Bough's lyrically driven style and stripped-down, post-RZA production choices add to that, with a "backpacker" vibe that recalls the glory days of Rawkus Records.

As Deca puts it on the title track: Dealz makes beats / I go in / A universal language we speak like old friends.

At the track's beginning, a child's voice gently intones: Sparkling sunlight / On a green leaf, before Deca picks up with Tree rings, old limbs / See the same patterns repeat like slogans. The slant rhyme of "limbs" with "-gans" introduces the wonderful flexibility of his low and mellifluous voice, which is just a bit nasal, like a back rub with the perfect amount of nails pressed in — but applied to your eardrums instead of your shoulder blades.

Much of the album's greatness, lyrically and sonically, springs from revisiting classic themes with a fresh take. But if you listen carefully, today's headlines often can be parsed from the songs. Nowhere is that more true than on the shimmering, simmering track "War," which opens with a cascade of samples before Deca jumps in with the verse: Nothing new / Same old hustle and subterfuge / Suffer through shockwaves we've grown accustomed to / Up the views / More skewed coverage and buzzard food.
"War" is more pointed than much of the rest of the album, which is as philosophical as it is topical. On "The Gist," Deca muses: Computers can play chess / But not the glass bead game / Meditate on that a sec / While they stack the deck / Hell-hounds at your heels / Vampires at your neck / Busy sharpenin' stakes while bats in the attic rest / The lastin' effect of a nation-wide acid test.

Throughout, it's a joy to listen to Deca's loopy, smart-as-hell raps, backed by Dealz's equally funky production. Like wandering through a beautiful landscape, there's too much to take in at one listen: As soon as you grasp a particularly complex lyrical dart, you notice all the wild background texture you're missing and have to back up.

One of the intriguing things about the two creatives' synergy is how different they are in person. In conversation, Deca is polite, measured and self-effacing, while Dealz is excited, jazzed and effervescent. But neither is over-thinking why it works as much as they're reveling in it. "He's my favorite rapper now," says Dealz. "He's my favorite writer."

Dealz is always hyper-focused on creating as much music as possible, much more so than keeping up with other players. Until they collaborated, he hadn't heard Deca at all, but after a mutual friend put them together, they clicked. As fast as Dealz could pump jams out, Deca would pick his favorites. And just as his tracks have been inspiring to the rapper, it's equally wild for Dealz to hear the lyrics that come back on top of them: "Every time I hear it, I pick something new up."
Bough is available now, both streaming and on vinyl (with color choices!), but you'll have to wait a bit for a live version. Deca won't be back in Denver until his art show at Bitfactory Gallery on December 20. In addition to his skills in the studio, he's an accomplished visual artist. He animated the video for Bough's single "Caught in the Fray" by hand, and he's been a participant in Denver's Visible Planets music and art show for two years running.

But delay or no delay, Dealz is ready to go now — he says he'd love to convince Deca to play the entire album live. "I'm trying to get him to do it," he says. "I want him to do something where we go to New York to do it, and [then we] do it in Denver. ... I can't wait for that one!"

Bough is available to stream now. A vinyl release is available at buelahrecords.com.