Killah Priest: Planet of the Gods

Killah Priest released “Starring King Zohar,” two years after “The Psychic World of Walter Reed,” which is likely an alter persona in the vein of Kool Keith. In actuality, “Planet of the Gods,” is a Mr. Reed record.

Godz Wrath, a Dutch team, managed the production. Only Jordan River Banks from that group seems to be still working as of 2023, which isn’t unexpected given that he is also credited with mixing the album and independently or jointly producing many of these songs, including the bizarrely titled “Golden Pineapple of the Sun.”

“Hip-Hop’s been altered/since The Psychic World of Walter

Now it stands like the rock of Gibraltar

Hood clips footage, flying saucers

Magi, rabbis close the Torah

Fallen angels disguise themselves as planets

Reprogramming from ape-man to kings riding a mammoth

Moldavite falling from the heights like it’s manna

I heard once you can’t serve both God and mammon”

Although Reed claims that the rap scene has undergone a seismic revolution, the mysterious rapper hasn’t really altered since his last album. He still conveys his message as if he were a prophet giving a rapt audience a sermon on the mount. Although I’m arrogant enough to think I can grasp most of the references to religion and the end of the world in his lyrics, I still had to search up what Moldavite was. It’s not strange that Killah Priest would mention a meteor striking Earth in passing. 

If you’ve followed Priest since “Heavy Mental,” you know that’s simply how he is, and if you’re new to Mr. Reed, welcome to one of rap’s most influential figures. His grim, smoky voice gives life to dark bars that deftly transition from rap to spoken word poetry. It scarcely matters which one he’s doing on “Creation of a Super God” because its captivating either way.

“Lasers turn eagles into starships/The mind can build, y’all never stop it/The rhymes are will within the cockpit.” 

Killah Priest is the only emcee who has the ability to speak his vision into existence. It’s challenging to suggest casual listening even if it’s intriguing to listen to. Priest is a difficult emcee to get a hold of. He doesn’t provide you with anything that adheres to the rap conventions that define both underground and mainstream hip-hop music. Who else would release a song like “The Vast Bottomless Sleep Cosmos” where he addresses you as a guest from another world or identifies himself as a Wu-Tang time traveler on “PWOWR Glove?” No one. In the best sense, he is in his own lane.

Albums like “Planet of the Gods” and “Summer End Cafe” present me with the exact same problem. I want to recommend them to other people, but I inherently recognize there’s nothing other than his ties to the Wu-Tang Clan to keep him in the minds of many, and we are so far removed from the Clan’s inception that people now call their music “old school.” Priest wasn’t even a founding member — he was just a close associate whose distinctive vocals quickly caused fans to want more of his work. I feel like for better or worse that’s his entire audience. The people who discovered him in the 1990s, who are still alive a quarter century later, still enjoying his unique “interdimensional forests” of rap on tracks like “Earth to Walter Reed Come In Please.”

I’d love to see Killah Priest get his flowers while he’s still alive, but I feel he’s destined to be better appreciated decades or perhaps centuries after he’s gone. I’m not sure this or any review can change that, and Walter Reed wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s been determined to forge a path no one else can (or would) follow since his earliest days, and “Planet of the Gods” is one of his most enjoyable inaccessible albums. That’s a contradiction. How can you enjoy something unavailable? Simple. If you listen to it and find it’s for you, you’re part of the particular and narrow niche of rap fans he’s making this type of music for. If you’re into trap rap, AutoTune, drill music, grime, G-Funk, or backpacker rap, it’s probably not for you… but unless you take a chance on traveling into his psychic world you’ll never know.