Release Date: 30 January 2026
Song Count: 13
Duration: 31 minutes, 57 seconds
Rating: 6.1/10
Description:
And she does it again! After less than a month of releasing her last album right at the start of the year, ISSBROKIE is back with yet another full-length record (albeit one that's reasonably shorter), this time a collaboration with another rising artist in her corner of the hip-hop scene, BLCKK. Now, I've complained a fair amount over the latest two albums of Brokie's not quite holding up to what I expect from her, though a big factor in why I may have potentially thought that way was simply due to how long and voluminous those albums were, each containing 20 or more songs, so perhaps with the return to a reduced amount of contents to examine, there may be less to see of this phenomenon.
As is tradition with most of these records, there is an intro and outro track that generally sets the mood, and this time, it revolves around BLCKK being made to record an album with Brokie after not recording or releasing much music after a while, and the two struggling to get along and trying to shoot each other. It's a very simple yet fun gimmick that acts as a made-up storyline for how this cooperation came to be, and especially the introduction got a chuckle out of me.
As for the songs themselves, CRASHDUMMIEZ! goes for quite the promising start, with legitimately interesting beats, solid rapping from both artists involved that keeps the ball rolling, and decent production. "GUNS!" has some humorous lines and shows how the rappers' styles bounce off of each other, "GRAPHICS!" shows a more aggressive side to their deliveries under a very minimal instrumental and has Brokie absolutely vanishing in lightning speed towards the 3/4 mark of the track, "MAGDUMP!" comes in with a punchier 808 bass and legitimately interesting backing sample, and "DATBOI!" goes for a full package, sprinkling in a mixture of everything and overall being quite enjoyable. With the pace these first tracks go in, it would look certain that this would surpass the previous times Brokie has appeared on this site.
Then track 6 arrives, and as much as there's aversion on my end to structure reviews overly dramatically in this way, this is the point where things go downhill here. Granted, that specific song presumably was likely made as a joke or at least not with the aim of producing something likable, but the blatantly obnoxious elements of the overly crunchy and deafening bass carries over to the next few tracks as well, poisoning parts of the well and tainting the quality until the album slowly recovers to near-normalcy by the time tracks 9 and 10 roll around. The final two tracks before the outro take another different turn, finding themselves stylistically closer to ISSBROKIE's main musical project shteppi, which generally tends to be much slower, more melodic and more sincere in nature, which especially "drugs." shows, combined with its darker lyrical subject matter.
Not unlike the last times we're looked at Brokie's crafts, CRASHDUMMIEZ! is a rollercoaster of a listening experience, surging through highs and slumming though equally as many lows on its way. Overall I would say it does hold up better, however, as even with the flunctuating level of quality in the sound production side of things, Brokie's and BLCKK's rap flows consistently hold up and radiate enough charisma to carry things forward, and the less appealing parts of the album make up a much smaller portion of it. I do hope that this is a sign of a positive trajectory for the future, with the artists' skills coming to shine brighter with the songs they make and the effort that goes into them also increasing.