“If you still sleepin’ on Sleep then you smokin’ crack,” as AJ Suede puts it on the second track. Taste is subjective, but his diagnosis rings true: Sleep Sinatra has built himself a modest empire in the independent rap scene. That he did so almost entirely from the frozen wastelands of Lincoln, Nebraska only makes it all more impressive. His media coverage, like his respect as an artisanal craftsman, is earned. Few motherfuckers can say that these days, at least in terms of who’s getting column inches of actual print in 2024.
If you like rap music, period, I feel confident recommending Sleep Sinatra’s increasingly nimble but earnestly fundamentalist style. Yet being a great rapper is not nearly enough; I’d wager what really elevated Sleep Sinatra to archetype status over the past decade is his quality control.
Being prolific without being exacting is not a strategy for long-term success. The second you stop funding the hype & hustling your brand, it will disappear. We’ve seen this ten thousand times now: an endless gallery of names that were inescapable for awhile but made zero real impression on either the culture or the artform. One day it just became obvious the only reason we kept hearing about them was because of money, connections or family — in practice, it was generally some combination of all three.
Pour one out for those sad old men, but Sleep Sinatra is not destined for that kind of non-legacy. Like the single most famous indie success story of the past decade, Alvin Worthy, the Nebraskan rapper-producer has built his name on being an impeccable A&R man, a real-deal executive producer with a long string of successful releases to his name. And just like the boys from Buffalo, that name carries some real weight now.
TELEVANGEL’s resume started with production duo Blue Sky Black Death, who were inescapable for a moment there. Granted, they had good management, but that catalog was undeniable: they were serving a better product than 99% of the scene. Unsurprisingly, his recent work also bangs. There’s no big narrative or musical evolution here, he’s still a top tier beatsmith with an unusually ambitious approach to sound design.
He’s bringing a distinctly raw, throwback style here to pair with Sinatra’s blunt poetics. As his recent spate of co-productions makes clear, TELEVANGEL can do just about anything he wants, and in this case, it’s cutting one of the best post-90’s rap albums that Sandbox Automatic never sold.
Sleep’s swagger here is pure blues. He is funny, angry, confident and heartbroken, half Ice-T and half DMX. Saying these nine tracks “work” is understatement past the point of insult. They transcend, they channel something vital and timeless. Shit also bangs.
I don’t have the attention span for ranking 2024’s best albums, but the pitch for “Incorruptible Saints” is far simpler: this is one of the very best introductions possible to Sleep Sinatra. It distills his persona & mythos into a pure, polished product that rewards repeated listens. That’s it. Five Dickies.
