Death Jokes

There’s a pleasing friction between the grainy or otherwise affected samples and the polished music around them. Whether they air the frustrations of pioneering artistic transgressors like Dilla and Bruce on “Poor Cops,” or propel the bombastic “Joyrider” with an echo chamber of exclamations right out of Ye’s Rick James sample on “Runaway,” they give the album an imminent sense of cacophony, of a messy world that can’t but intrude on McMahon’s thoughts. It’s a collective sound, and a haunting one.