New Kingdom - Heavy Load
Psyched-out, brain-stomping hip hop that burned a trail of its own
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Here’s a confession: in hip hop, I love great MCs, but I love heavy, HEAVY production too. It’s why I was drawn to groups like Public Enemy or Cypress Hill; the sheer power of the Bomb Squad or DJ Muggs’ productions ensured that the music hit hard, much like the metal I’d grown up on.
Music for me was always something visceral first. As a teen I’d say I was angrier than most, for no specific reason. Some might argue I still am, I often joke that I’m at my most motivated when I’m angry. Maybe John Lydon was right: anger is an energy. Any which way, it is in my DNA.
When I first started getting into hip hop, it was the heavier stuff that really caught me. It is worth noting that the UK represented well on this front. Tracks like Hardnoise’s Untitled and Gunshot’s Nobody Move (and indeed their entire run of singles up to their first album) were prime examples: raw, heavy breakbeats that always got your adrenalin firing.
I’d argue this is also why I connected so much with Run The Jewels; El-P’s productions never pulled their punches, and by the time RTJ2 dropped he had finessed that into something positively lethal. There’s a story to tell about how that record dug me out of a very dark place, but this is not the place - some other time, maybe.
For me then, heavy, heavy beats always snapped my neck around in attention. Ergo, when I first heard Good Times by New Kingdom around 2001, which is on their 1993 album Heavy Load, my mind was blown. Where the hell had this gem been hiding my whole life?!
Sometimes you stumble on albums many years after they first dropped, and you can only sit and wonder how this record never received the attention and sales you feel it should have. Heavy Load is one such example to me.
New Kingdom certainly stand apart. I recall an interview with them in Big Daddy magazine in which they admitted to buying any Hendrix bootleg they could find on the basis there was always something to sample in it. Sonically, you can take this as a signpost to their sound: guitar samples abound, psychedelic atmospheres flood the mix, whilst the two MCs, Nosaj and Sebastian, sounded throaty, raw, and impassioned. Where most hip hop drew largely from funk and soul, New Kingdom sampled rock and even metal, understanding how it could all contribute to this dense, hefty sound they clearly heard in their heads.
Opening track Good Times sets the tone, and as already mentioned, this one took my head off when I first heard it. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it: my mate Jim had made mix a mixtape, and this opened it. I was instantly on a mission to learn more about who the hell New Kingdom were.
"Pourin' no lies
No suits 'n ties
No need to rush
We loves to fuck time”
And with that, in drops one of the heaviest beats committed to tape. It drops like a sledgehammer, the kick drum sounding like you’ve woken up in John Bonham’s kick drum after a heavy night on the lash.
Describing the swagger of New Kingdom’s sound on this album is tough. Often the sample sources are from the 60s rock end of things: hard drums, heavily FX’d guitars, solo vamps from who knows where… all accompanied by wall destroying bass and the kind of breaks that aim to blow speakers out. In many respects, it sounds a little like if you took Funkadelic at their heaviest, then dropped the guitars and vocals right back, and doubled both the bass and the drums in the mix so that they dominate.
It’s a seriously heady combination, one I’ve found cannot possibly be played loud enough.
Despite the heaviness though, New Kingdom never forgot to groove. Frontman is a case in point, delivering a wicked bassline sample with a laconic sax riff that somehow just works. And the lyrics pop as ever. The style here was short, poppin’ lines that bring their own percussive touch. You can almost hear it when you read a verse:
“Crazy laid-back
Natural psycho
When I pick up the pen
I don't think, I just let it go
And make you realize, ain't no jive
So baby, bring on the waves and watch me ride
Through the shitfall
I give it all, y'all
'Cause my mind and my soul is on call fo y'all”
Cheap Thrills is another laid back swagger of a track, again with the bass jacked up so that it floods your ears. The mix also has that gritty quality so desired in heavier ends of 60s and 70s rock: distorted, fuzzy, but all sounding like the tape it was recorded on has just worn down that little bit, blunting the edges.
The vocals again take the psychedelic turn, channeling Hendrix at his most lysergic:
“Done smoked the sun and the stars
Will you catch me if I'm flyin' this far?
Done seen the tides turn ill
My closet's still a fulla no frills
These times are ill”
At points, the grooves here feel like something the Beastie Boys would have enjoyed in their instrumental, In Sound From Way Out guise.
Live, New Kingdom had migrated their sound perfectly too, enrolling a live band who didn’t so much as perfectly replicate their album’s sound as evolve it. Gongs, percussion, a live drummer… it was spot on, and something of a peek into what the group could have been given the opportunity.
Check out this version of Cheap Thrills on 90s ‘yoof’ late night staple The Word to see what I mean:
Following Cheap Thrills comes arguably the heaviest track on the record: Mars. This was another song that stopped me in my tracks when I heard it. Again, that bass just blasts, making the mellow B3 organ in the background sound almost invisible at points. It’s a barrelling, swaggering monster of a track, falling back to a squealing guitar kind of sound for the breakdowns, once more continuing that 60s/70s funk touch.
“Mars is calling
I’m lookin’ at a Doomsday
Yes yes y’allin
To the fuckin’ break of day”
This is New Kingdom staring out to space, longing for someplace else to be, exasperated with what they see around them. Lyrically, it is a perfect accompaniment to the spaced-out, loping, brutally saturated bass hook.
On Calico Cats, one might argue that Beasties vibe comes through again, dropping a tight break and a squirrelly guitar line that chops through the track, all jittering and uptight before giving way to more solo vamps at the break. If you loved both Pauls Boutique and Check Your Head, I’d argue this track will strike a chord, leaping around from sample to sample, never letting up on the funkiness.
Mighty Maverick is New Kingdom at their most blunted, with a swirling atmosphere accompany yet another tight beat, but this time with croaked, stoned lyrics muttering about driving high on octane, “my horses running free”.
Initially, it does not seem to be leading anywhere as track… feeling light due to the absence of bass. Hold tight though - get to 1m30s and you’re rewarded with another monster bassline that weaves into the groove and gets your head nodding before you even realise it. Step back Cypress Hill - this is a comparable stoned masterpiece.
It is only in the final track that New Kingdom take their foot off your throat, easing back down into a soulful exit song that bookends the record perfectly.
“I’m in between
I’m like a stream
I climbed the mountains
I met the king
He had a dream
I’m in between
I saw it all”
With that, the album ends, quite probably leaving your room smelling of dank weed, such is the vibrance of it all.
I often point out personnel involved in a record who deserve fair credit for their contribution. So it is here, with Scott Harding being acknowledged by the band as being the person who brought New Kingdom’s whole sound together. Both co-producing and mixing the album, he is the glue that keeps this album as a wonderful, flowing trip of a listen all in place.
Describing just why Heavy Load hits the spot is incredibly hard, as it relies on a dense mix of atmospherics, stoned, psychedelic lyrics, wah-wah guitar touches and the heaviest breaks and basslines. Descriptions will always fall short; this is an album that you have to soak yourself in.
New Kingdom only went on to make one more album, Paradise Don’t Come Cheap, released in 1996. Among friends, it might be their preferred album. To me, it lacked the consistency and groove of Heavy Load, so didn’t quite grab me the same way as a whole-album listen.
It did, however, deliver New Kingdom’s greatest song: Unicorns Were Horses. This, in my view anyway, is the band hitting their highest point in a single song, channelling every influence, every vibe and every emotion into a track that to this day still gives me the chills every time I hear it.
The drums are a little dialled back on Unicorns, but replacing it is a consistently droning B3 organ, crashing percussion and a desperate, passionate vocal that shows the band at their very best. The album might not match Heavy Load, but make no mistake: Unicorns Were Horses is truly phenomenal.
We live in an age where people speculate if AI can create music good enough to completely replace musicians. Nothing could ever have conceived a sound like that of New Kingdom. They truly stood apart, and deserve to be credited as one of the best of their time.
In a 2016 interview for Red Bull Music Academy (which I highly recommend reading) Nosaj said that he “wanted our records to stand up next to records by Pink Floyd and Hendrix. I wanted people to be, like, ‘Holy shit, we are about to get LIFTED and listen to this record.’”
I’d argue they damn-near managed it. Grab the headphones, crank the volume up, and sit back and enjoy Heavy Load. Then finish by blowing your mind on Unicorns Were Horses. You’ll thank me for it.