You know, usually when we pull the data for these
deep dives, there's a pretty consistent story.
You look at a classic album, the data looks classic,
high scores all around. Right. Consensus is usually
pretty easy to spot. We like to think we all,
you know... generally agree on what's good but
today we are looking at a set of numbers that
honestly just shouldn't exist for the same album
we're talking about a record from 2016 that was
simultaneously dismissed as forgettable by some
of the biggest taste makers and yet literally
crowned album of the year by others it's a true
statistical anomaly depending on which column
of the spreadsheet you look at this album is
either a throwaway joke or an absolute masterpiece.
And the album at the center of this whole storm
is BBF, hosted by DJ Escrow. The Dig You Studio
album by the British group Babyfather. I have
to say, if that name Babyfather sounds a bit
like a provocation or a joke, you're already
halfway to understanding this record, aren't
you? Oh, definitely. You have to look at who's
involved. The driving force here is Dean Blunt.
And if you follow experimental music at all...
You know, Dean Blunt is basically the master
of this lo -fi, almost troll -level performance
art. He just loves blurring those lines. And
he's joined by this character, DJ Escrow, and
a third member, Gasman D. The lineup itself is
a bit of a mystery. Character is the perfect
word. The whole project is just wrapped in Enigma.
So the mission for this deep dive isn't just
to review an album. It's to figure out how a
single piece of music can fracture the critical
landscape so violently. Is it a masterpiece or
a mess? And why can't anyone seem to agree? Well,
to answer that, we have to look at how it was
released. With Dean Blunt, the context is usually
just as important as the content itself. Well,
looking at the release data, the context basically
screams prank. It dropped on April 1st, 2016.
April Fool's Day. Exactly. And it was released
on Hyperdub. Now, for anyone who doesn't know,
Hyperdub is massive. That's the label founded
by Code 9. It's the home of Burial. It's known
for, you know, serious, dark, intellectual, electronic
music. So you have this prestigious, super serious
label. And then they dropped this album on April
Fool's Day. It feels like they were daring you
not to take it seriously. Or daring you to find
the truth inside the joke. You have to remember,
in 2016, Dean Blunt was coming off projects like
Hype Williams. He thrives on that tension. Is
he making fun of us, or is this the most sincere
thing he's ever done? And we should probably
clarify, despite the debut tag, Babyfather was
really active in 2016. They had other releases
like Platinum Tears and 419, but this one, BBF,
this was the big one. This was the studio album
statement. The main event. The genre tags we
have are experimental, hip -hop, and dub. But
if you go in expecting a standard hip -hop record,
you're going to be so confused. Oh, yeah. It
sounds less like a polished album and more like
a broken radio. That's the DJ Escrow influence.
The album is framed as a pirate radio broadcast.
You have this host, Escrow, just shouting over
tracks, cutting things off, ranting. It's aggressive.
Which totally explains the track list structure.
I was looking at the metadata, and it's just
overwhelming. 23 tracks. It looks like a lot
on paper, for sure. But then you look closer,
and the runtime is just under 50 minutes. Yeah.
So the math implies a lot of these aren't really
songs in the way we think of them. They're shards.
Little fragments. I mean, look at this. You've
got escrow, then escrow 2, then escrow 3. Uh
-huh. Escrow 2 is literally 25 seconds long.
Escrow 3 is 29 seconds. And message is 50 seconds.
It's just incredibly aggressive pacing. Just
when you think you're settling into a groove,
the album just changes the channel on you. It's
anti -flow. A normal album wants to seduce you
to keep you listening. This album is constantly
interrupting itself. It's like it's mimicking
that experience of just scanning the radio dial
or maybe the fragmented attention span of the
Internet age. It refuses to let you get comfortable.
It really does. But, OK, amidst all that noise
and interruption in these 20 second skits, there
are some serious heavy hitters in the credits.
I actually did a double take when I saw the production
list. You saw Arca. I saw Arca. That is not a
name you expect to see buried in the liner notes
of what some people called a prank album. No,
Arca is electronic royalty. We're talking high
definition, avant -garde sound design. Arca's
worked with Bjork, Kanye West, FKA Twigs. So
how does a producer known for that pristine,
high -tech sound fit into this lo -fi pirate
radio thing? Paradoxically, Arca is on three
tracks. There's meditation. which was actually
the lead single. That one's a full song, right?
It's up in five minutes. It is. It's a centerpiece.
It kind of grounds the album. It shows that they
can make a real song if they want to. Okay. But
then in true baby father fashion, look at the
track Beneaths. It's also credited as featuring
Arca. I'm looking at it now. It's 39 seconds
long. That's the punchline. You get one of the
world's most talented in -demand producers in
the studio with you, and you use a 39 -second
snippet. It's a flex. It's absolutely a flex.
It's saying, we don't need to give you the pop
banger you want. We're giving you this atmosphere.
It completely subverts the whole idea of a feature.
There's also a feature from Mika too on God Hour.
Micah Levi, yes. Another genius from the British
experimental scene. So despite the whole April
Fool's rapper and the chaotic structure, the
people involved here are incredibly highbrow.
This isn't just a throwaway mixtape. That tension
is fascinating. You have these high art collaborators,
a legendary label, but the album's structure
is designed to alienate you. It is. You have
these massive bookends, stealth intro is five
minutes, stealth outro is three and a half, and
then this chaotic middle where songs barely last
a minute. It forces you to work. You can't just
put this on in the background at a dinner party.
It demands your attention, mostly by just annoying
you until you pay attention. Which brings us
right to the reception, because clearly a lot
of critics did not want to do the work. That
is one way to put it, yeah. So let's look at
the average view first. The aggregate data, Metacritic
has it at a 72. I feel safe. It's the gentleman's
seven. In music journalism, a 72 usually means
I respect that this is art and I don't want to
look stupid, but I didn't actually enjoy it.
Any decent music has it even lower, 6 .8. And
when you dig into the reviews from the big publications,
you just see a lot of shrugging. Pitchfork gave
it a 6 .0. And in Pitchfork math, a 6 .0 is basically
purgatory. It's a do not touch. Pop matters,
a 6. The quietest, who usually live for this
kind of weirdness, gave it a 6. Even The Wire
gave it a 7. And they cover literal noise music.
So the consensus from the establishment was,
interesting experiment. But too messy. They likely
saw the repetition, the 22nd tracks, the shouting
DJ, and just saw it as undercooked. Exactly.
They treated it like a failed hip -hop album
instead of a successful piece of conceptual art.
But here. This is where the data gets wild, because
if you just looked at those scores, the sixes
and the sevens, you'd write the album off completely.
But then you have this other group of critics
who treated it like the Holy Grail. True believers.
Mixmag drops an 8 out of 10. Resident Advisor,
which is like the Bible for electronic music,
gives it a 4 .1 out of 5. That is a serious endorsement.
It is. But the real shocker comes when you look
at the year -end lists. Right. Let's just set
the stage. 2016 was a monster year for music.
We're talking about history -making releases.
Massive. Absolutely massive. You had Beyonce
with Lemonade. Frank Ocean finally dropped Blonde.
David Bowie left us with Blackstar. Titans of
Industry. Culture -shifting albums. And yet,
when Tiny Mixtapes released their favorite 50
music releases of 2016, who was number one? It
wasn't Beyonce. It was Babyfather. Number one.
Above Lemonade. Above Blackstar. And they weren't
the only ones. Resident Advisor also named it
their number one album of 2016. I just want to
pause on that. How do you reconcile that? How
does the same album get a 6 .0 from Pitchfork
and the number one spot from Resident Advisor?
It all comes down to what you value in art. If
you value polish, song structure, emotional directness
like Blonde or Lemonade Babyfather is going to
annoy you. It's antagonistic. It is definitely
not holding your hand. But if you value conceptual
rigor. If you value music that reflects the confusion
and the noise of the time, then this album is
a masterpiece. It captures a mood that those
polished pop albums just couldn't touch. So the
critics who loved it saw the fragmentation not
as a flaw, but as the entire point. Precisely.
They saw it as a portrait of a fractured society.
The DJ escrow character isn't just an annoyance.
He's the voice of the underground that's usually
ignored, shouting about the reality of the city.
It's also interesting that The Wire, who gave
it that lukewarm seven at first, ended up putting
it at number 15 on their best releases of 2016
list. It grew on them. And that's the sign of
a challenging record. It confuses you at first.
You might even dislike it. But it sticks in your
brain. You find yourself thinking about those
escrow skits days later. And Resident Advisor
even doubled down, putting it on their top albums
of the 2010s list. So this wasn't just a 2016
fluke for them. It had legs. It aged well because
the world got more chaotic, not less. That sense
of disorientation the album creates feels even
more relevant now than it did then. It really
makes you wonder about aggregate scores like
Metacritic. We see that 72 and we think average,
we think mediocre. But in this case, the 72 is
actually an average of, I hate this and this
is the greatest thing I've ever heard. Which
is arguably a much more interesting score than
a universal 8, isn't it? It suggests that polarization
is a better indicator of interesting art than
consensus is. I would agree with that. Safe art
gets eights. Radical art gets ones and tens.
If everyone agrees an album is pretty good, it
probably didn't take any risks. Baby Father took
every single risk. So for the listener who hasn't
heard this yet, if they decide to dive in, they
shouldn't go in expecting songs. No. Go in expecting
a broadcast. Yeah. A collage. Listen to the transitions,
how the escrow tracks disrupt everything. And
pay attention to those moments where the beauty
breaks through, like on Meditation or Deep. Deep
is another one of those ARCA tracks, right? It
is. It's three minutes, 11 seconds. It's dark,
dubby. It's a glimpse of the pure musicality
Dean Blunt is capable of when he stops pranking
you for a moment. It's a reminder that Dean Blunt,
Escrow, and Gasman D are just playing a different
game than the rest of the industry. They aren't
trying to win a Grammy. They're trying to mess
with your head. They are trying to make you question
what an album even is. And clearly for the folks
at Resident Advisor and Tiny Mixtapes, it worked.
It certainly did. It's funny looking back at
those middle of the road reviews, the ones that
gave it a six or seven, they often mention the
potential being there but feeling unfulfilled.
Which is so ironic because the unfulfilled feeling
is the aesthetic. It's supposed to feel incomplete,
like you missed the end of the song because the
signal cut out. And that requires a real shift
in how we listen. We are so used to completion.
We want the hook. The verse, the chorus, the
outro. And baby father gives you the hook, then
static, then a skit, then silence. It's frustrating,
but it's also exhilarating if you just let go
of your expectations. Here's a thought to leave
you with. We live in an era of algorithmic recommendation,
right? Spotify and Apple Music, they want to
feed you things you will like. They want smooth
sailing. They want you to just keep the playlist
running. Right. An album like BBF, which is prickly
and difficult and just weird, is exactly the
kind of thing an algorithm would bury. It breaks
the pattern. It causes people to hit skip. It's
friction. So does a 72 on Metacritic even matter
if the people who connect with the work think
it's the single best thing created that year?
Maybe we should be seeking out the friction rather
than letting the data smooth everything out for
us. I think that's the only way you find the
really good stuff. The stuff that actually changes
how you hear music. Go give it a listen. Start
with Stealth Intro and see if you can make it
to Stealth Outro and decide which side of the
divide you're on. Just don't let DJ Escrow scare
you off. Thanks for diving dupe with us. We'll
catch you on the next one.