When you hear the name Grime One and the title of his latest work, “The Devil’s Dust” mentioned, most of your assumptions are correct before you push play. No, he’s not here to make you dance… he’s here to scare the living shit out of you through instrumentals.

    But please don’t think this is an ode to the demonic ruler of the afterlife. After all, the “devil” is prevalent wherever we go and it comes in many forms. Grime’s newest dust-themed project is the descendant of his late 2021 first quarter release, “Duste Copperfield”. However, his latest work is even more potent because of the album’s dark theme, and its arrival on “Devil’s Night”, historically an October 30th looter’s paradise in the city of Detroit. In addition, this is one of the more unpredictable beat tapes you’ll ever hear.

    That’s not a bad thing, though.

    Sure, he could’ve taken the easy route and littered the album with vocal samples as hooks. Instead, the vocals he selects are used to lure you in. The samples are pitched down to add to the eerie landscape. Classic example is the album opener, “Mischief”, which begins with a murky, inaudible vocal and quickly turns into an instant head-nodding track you could visualize the Hieroglyphics crew trading verses over.

    “Devil Horns” is perfectly titled, beginning with a newscaster talking about firefighters posing in front of a burning house in Detroit. The horns soon follow, then the drums, and what sounds like an elderly lady humming a spiritual to calm her disgust with man’s evil intent.

    More interesting cuts include “Soldiers”, with its crushing rhythms, “Flatlined”, which begins with another news reporter in the intro commenting on the annual “Devil’s Night”, and “Burn It All”, a culmination of someone frustrated with their own issues plus the problems that plague their daily living.

    Basically, you can tell Grime One really did his homework. Even though the album metaphorically paints bleak pictures of a city once in disarray, amidst the dark tones of the music lies optimism and growth. In a strange way, he finds a way to musically tell you a story for historical purposes, but he also shows you there’s hope…. As long as you don’t succumb to the most powerful dust of them all…. The Devil’s Dust.