
Ghais Guevara
Goyard Ibn Said
Fat Possum
Picture this: A mostly empty art house showing Ingmar Bergman films, radical north Philly auteur Ghais Guevara sitting in the seats, the gears of his blown mind spinning. Unbeknownst to anybody in the room, Guevara is already plotting an epic tale of changing fortunes, tracing the rise and fall of Goyard Ibn Said, a rapper on the fast track to fame and fortune. He’s in for a rude awakening.
Tragedy and trauma – explicitly articulated in “The Apple That Hardly Fell,” harpsichord sounds flitting about – take a toll on the mental health of Guevara’s protagonist in Act II of what he’s calling his debut album, Goyard’s downward spiral sewn into a psychedelic fabric of expansive, cinematic hip-hop with Guevara’s dense, evocative wordplay and deadpan flow. The mood eventually turns dark, as the dizzying “Bystander Effect” – boosted by ELUCID’s forceful directness – lives in the shadows and menacing streets, and a swirling, kaleidoscopic “4L” walks with a quickening gait through trippy rings of fire into a cauldron of devastating trials and tribulations.
Reality sets in with “Critical Acclaim” and its lush piano expression, a backdrop of loud crowd murmur dissolving almost imperceptibly, scattershot opinions on various controversies fading into a wall of static-plastered noise that closes the joint. As his mental stability erodes, a reeling Goyard seems far away from the celebratory feel of Act I, where the triumphant “The Old Guard is Dead” wails and swaggers to deliciously slow beats and strings, soaking it all in, and an immersive “Leprosy” feels as if it’s trapped in an emerald underworld, shrugging off all complaints and critiques. Make way for the king, his dazzling aural path strewn with flowers.
Artfully woven together, with a sharp sense of humor and an ear for diverse, resonant blooms of sounds, Goyard Ibn Said is an auspicious and audacious staging, where ambition, confidence, and sanity crumble and collapse like mountains into the sea. Getting back up is the next adventure.