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Freestyling into the void with Model Home

April 10, 2019 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Pat Cain, left, and Nappy Nappa make up the “abstract rap” duo Model Home. (Boost/Auto Lola)

Bad reflexes are imploring me to call Model Home an “abstract rap” duo, but that description has to be inadequate for it to be true, so maybe it’s better to talk about what it is that Pat Cain (electronic machines) and Nappy Nappa (human voice) are actually doing in Model Home, and if you’re wondering why this sentence hasn’t ended yet, it’s because I’m trying to record my thoughts about the music of Model Home the same way that Model Home might record a song, that is, in a messy and unblinking improvisational blurt that quickly becomes dense and confusing, even though reality itself is often incredibly confusing and overwhelmingly dense, and perhaps that’s the fundamental idea radiating from every spontaneous noise-blot ever made by this District duo, who were first introduced to each other at the Black Cat and started making recordings soon after, some of which you can hear on “1,” which is the first Model Home album, released digitally last June, (only recently pressed to vinyl), but there have been other Model Home albums since then, including “2,” and “3,” and “4,” and “5,” and “6,” and while “4” is my personal favorite so far, the operative words are “so” and “far,” because there’s probably more music coming, at least according to Nappa and Cain, who keep getting together to let it rip, blindly and boldly leaping out of the present and into the future, forever freestyling into the void, and after getting that tiny glimpse into the duo’s improvisational process, I only had one more question for Model Home, which was really just for Nappa, who has made all kinds of wild-style rap tunes under his own name, and I emailed him to ask, “Nappa, do you approach your lyrics differently in Model Home than you do in your solo work?” and Nappa typed out a reply that might help you, the reader-slash-listener, surf Model Home’s brain waves more successfully than any of the other keystrokes located on this page, so I’m quoting directly: “No en essence but yes en choice uv lyrics because uv th space patterns uv sounds that are used by Pat has moor room tu just flow so th ability tu glide between lullabies & rhymes just allow me tu say different words.”

Show: April 12 at 8 p.m. at Studio Ga Ga, 2218 18th St. NW. $10.