Album Review: Maggot Mouf & Sammy Scissors - Runnin With Scissors

It's Australian hip hop so there aren't any ivory towers. There's not really a high horse to get down from. A few notable exceptions aside, prominence tends to elude people who make rap in this country. But if there was ever evidence that there was an underground flipside to a mainstream that we may have become accustomed to, it's this album. Runnin With Scissors is a glorious antidote to the sing-song delivery and ARIA-baiting that's been getting you down the past few years. Maggot and Sammy will spit in your face, steal your fancy sneakers and run off quick as a flash – all without spilling a drop from their longnecks.

Mouf is, first and foremost, eloquent. He bears comparison with Melbourne kingpin Brad Strut. Surprisingly experimental for someone so “street”, his delivery is considered and his intellect is formidable. He knows how he wants his lines to sound. There's menace, and desperation, and anger and boredom. Scissors' production is a little more straightforward: boom-bap blank canvasses for his colleague on the mic to rip apart. The combined effect is intoxicating. Raw is a mission statement. No subtlety or subterfuge: our hosts like their lives and their rap music raw. While the album has peaks such as Glory, which benefits considerably from Mata and Must guest spots, and troughs like How We Spit, where a disappointing Scott Skills delivers the unintentionally ironic line “This is the way we spit it… Admit it: you wish we didn't”, through it all there is clarity and purpose.

You've heard more beautiful records, and you've certainly heard more polished ones, but there's something (dare we use the word?) real about this album. Well worth your time.