The shit-starting Atlanta band Algiers has refused to fit into any sort of genre or pigeonhole. Instead, they make furious resistance music, drawing from sounds across the landscape and following their own ideas of how to do it. Today, Algiers have followed up their 2020 album There Is No Year, coming back hard with a new six-minute single that features two of the best rap expressionists currently working.
On the new song “Bite Back,” Algiers leader Franklin James Fisher trades verses with Backxwash, the metal-influenced and Polaris Prize-winning rapper and producer, and with billy woods, the Armand Hammer rapper whose Aethiopes is one of this year’s best albums. It’s a nervy, intense synth-rap track with a beat that keeps falling apart and coming back together, and it gives all three vocalists a chance to poetically address some deeply fucked-up power structures.
In a press release, Algiers multi-instrumentalist Ryan Mahan says:
Shit’s been so real the past few years, we really needed to grow our community of collaborators and make solid the bonds we’ve always felt, particularly with rap heads. And to have the two best rappers around, billy woods and Backxwash, on the same Algiers-produced track? Pinch me, for real.
Meanwhile, Franklin James Fisher says:
Ryan showed up one day with this beautifully epic instrumental and said, “I’ve got this song, and I want to call it ‘Bite Back.’ It immediately reminded me why I joined this band and the rest of the song seemed to write itself. It’s a classic example of our Lenin-McCartney dynamic.
Below, check out the Murat Gökmen-directed “Bite Back” video.
“Bite Back” is out now on Matador.
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