After listening to HELP ME—the debut project from Toronto rapper Teddy Fantum—front to back over a dozen times over the last month, it's been hard to shake the lingering similarities I felt between Fantum's project and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and its nine circles of hell (the first of which, out of pure coincidence, is Limbo—the name of the project that Fantum scrapped before creating HELP ME).
At 10 tracks long, HELP ME takes the listener through a progressively darker journey into Fantum's mental state and the various demons he has contended with in his life. The project's intro, "Darkest Hour," ends with a concert-worthy chant: ("I hate like everyone, for real"); the blues-worthy confessional rap style on "Strange," probably the first good country-rap song in years, sees Fantum thank his "imaginary friends" for providing company that most people couldn't; the ninth and penultimate track, "Baredevil" (once again, lending itself to an "OH SHIII" coincidence), mirrors the way in which Dante encounters Satan in the ninth circle of hell before escaping to Purgatory. All of this is closed off by "Be A Star"—a crumbling, wailing, autotuned monologue that sounds like Kid Cudi entered digital hell to write a poem.
Advertisement
Trying to explain this without other people being able to listen to project has been driving me insane for the better part of three weeks, but I thankfully don't have to do that anymore, because HELP ME is now out. You can find a link for it, along with a release video from Fantum, below.
Jake Kivanç is working on the Bible of Toronto hip-hop. Follow him on Twitter.