Metal Chocolates

An audio treat as tasty as the custom-wrapped chocolates packaged in the cassette gift box that was, for a time, the only way to hear this band's music. This unorthodox presentation belies the album's complex, dopamine-drenched sounds and floating, free-form vocal tracks, in the same trippy ballpark as Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction. Producer/vocalist OC Notes repeatedly amazes with the impressionistic solo records that magically appear on his Bandcamp page every couple of months. -TODD HAMM - Seattle Weekly

SW: How does Metal Chocolates fit into your catalogue?
Rik Rude: I mean, overall each project is its own thing. [Metal Chocolates] just kind of created itself. I'm very privileged to work with OC Notes. We just kind of got together. Just the camaraderie, two artists getting together, you know? I don't even know what it is yet.

Speaking of OC Notes, what drew you into working with him?

A lot of people don't know, but I've known Otis for well over six years; I've known him for a very long time. We really just met randomly talking about random sciences, and just building, and talking about life. And we both found out "Oh, you do music?" And we just kind of started making music together. It just kind of came together, just kind of really random.

Where did the name Metal Chocolates come from?

I don't want to promote my art as having to take a substance to create your art, because that's not the case, but I specifically wanted to convey my psychedelic trip through the music, Inspired by Willy Wonka. That's kind of what I wanted to do: create my own visual world. That's kind of how that name came about. For the record, I want "Metal Chocolates" to mean whatever the listener thinks it means, I think it makes it more fun that way.

Is there a time frame for the Metal Chocolates vinyl release?

I'd like to say before the end of the year.

Does Fresh Espresso plan on putting out another album?

We've actually completed our second album, and we're just trying to figure out the right time to put it out, but it's pretty fucking filthy. I'm not gonna sit here and bullshit you, it's pretty fucking filthy. We're excited about it.

With Fresh Espresso and also Metal Chocolates at the Block Party, what kind of things do you have in store?

Every show is their own experience, and there's always room for twists and turns and all sorts of different things. Fresh Espresso is going to be unveiling some new material from the record, the album coming out. Metal Chocolates, we've got a few interesting things that we're gonna do. I can't really let the cat out the bag right away. - Seattle Weekly

Metal Chocolates. I used to read this group’s name and think about the band Seaweed. Don’t ask me why. Then I heard it on KEXP one day and was like “Oh, this is hip-hop. How much are these yams?” Seriously, that’s exactly what I said because I was at a fruit stand and they were playing KEXP on their speakers. Fruit stands are cool like that. Support your local vendors. “Candy Store Controller” reminds me of these crazy dreams I used to have as a kid. I’m not going to go into them but let’s just say they involved Ginger Baker (the drummer from Cream) Latrobe, Pa. and the use of inhalants. I’d love to see Hallmark use this song for the during the next Valentine’s Day. Nothing says “I love you” like finger snaps, bon-bons and mescaline. What was that honey? Oh, that’s just my stereo. I close my eyes and I start hearing things…. (Phil) - Sound on the Sound

At the end of 2010, I placed my hiphop bets for 2011 on three acts: Shabazz Palaces, 10.4 Rog, and Metal Chocolates. The first two bets are settled—the new Shabazz Palaces album is out of this world, and 10.4 Rog's collaboration with The Good Sin is gold. One bet is left, and I very much doubt it will lose. Metal Chocolates—rapper Rik Rude (Fresh Espresso) and producer OC Notes (Dap Confuser)
—are well connected and super talented, and have already made a local classic, "Afro Egypt": "We love ladies from London, Brazil, to Israel." Indeed, love makes the world go round and round. - The Stranger

Everyone involved in Metal Chocolates is fire. Nice work on the video Stephan Gray.

#Supporter - Winners Circle

With people piling in to Reverb Fest between the hours of 1:30 to 4:00 in the afternoon, many people were faced with the question, “what do I see first?” Lots bustled off to see Kaylee Cole at 2:00pm, but for some who couldn’t make it, the festival started at 4:00pm with Metal Chocolates at the Sunset Tavern.

Metal Chocolates have got swagger in spades. Amongst the DIY rap/hip-hop/trip-hop acts that are doing their thing in Seattle, OC Notes, Rik Rude, Chocolate Chuck, and Trent Moorman are standing neck-and-shoulders above the rest with their avant-chill approach to hip-hop.

Many who know Rik Rude’s smooth voice from Fresh Espresso have gravitated towards Metal Chocolates. Not only does MC’s style give the appropriate space for Rude’s voice to flourish, OC Notes has a Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) sing-song quality to his raps that make Metal Chocolates the Black Star of Seattle’s music scene. Yes please.

You can catch Metal Chocolates next with Shabazz Palaces at The Triple Door as part of City Arts Fest. - Seattle Show Gal

Metal Chocolates (Rik Rude and OC Notes) make an experimental space house hip-hop sound that's pretty mind blowing -- but it won't make your head explode -- you'll just freak out (in a good good way). Featuring tracks from their self-titled full length, live on KEXP's Audioasis with Hannah Levin. - M. Khazak - KEXP

In Metal Chocolates‘ brand new video for “Car Chase,” what seems like a seedy drug transaction becomes something a bit more innocent but no less calamitous: the rip-and-run of magic gold coins. In a chase that would be called high-speed if not for rattling stop-and-start slow motion cuts, the thieves celebrate their heist while still very much in danger, the coins beginning to glow as much as their new owners when blissful, oblivious joy shines through amidst an otherwise sullied moment.

The realities presented in Metal Chocolates’ self-titled debut are an at-times sweet perception of urban decay. The bandits in question are ethereally-inclined producer OC Notes and rapper Rik Rude, best known for his work with Fresh Espresso, who combine to take a trip where the city’s supposed ills are not seen through the lenses of good and evil: they just are, and as a part of this blessed existence that is life, have their own inherent lights to be found.

In a recent NPR interview with Ann Powers and Andrew Matson the duo discussed the inspiration for the project, citing Pioneer Square (which is referenced frequently on the album) as setting and character in its own right. Notes and Rude have been collaborating for several years and Metal Chocolates continues the themes and sounds begun in the 30-minute freestyle Dope Fiend Jazz: the anxieties of the impoverished and addicted, as seen from first- and third-person perspectives, but also the love fostered by familiarity within a community. “Chocolate Grills for Cavities” may suggest exacerbating an issue of deterioration, but it also may be a call for making the best of life and seeing it fully, forgetting neither the outer sweetness nor its relation to something wrong inside.

Metal Chocolates’ messages are decidedly hazy, a swirling perspective of “I see kingdoms” on “Afro Egypt” and “a green SUV on the run” on the frantic “Car Chase,” and the presentation is no less disorienting. It’s been called psychedelic-rap before, and it will not be able to shake the tag anytime soon — genre stylings are amorphous, jazz, house, soul, world music adding some influence to OC Notes’ original backdrops. Rude’s flow continues on a free-form bent, much more poetic than anything Fresh Espresso, imagery triumphing over accessibility.

Metal Chocolates give fresh perception to what the listener may feel they know already, but haven’t seen like this before. It does not stop with the music either: fans may still purchase a plain-old digital copy or splurge on the $30 Gift Box, with t-shirt, cassette tape, gold coin, and “extra special bonus goodies” creating a comprehensive package. The duo will continue to stretch and mold perspectives at this year’s Capitol Hill Block Party and at October’s Reverb Fest. Until then, their April debut will continue to champion the artist’s eye, obscuring nothing, only seeking to see reality from previously unexplored angles. - SSG

Seattle hip-hop music has been branching out into different genres in recent years, and inside that general broadening is a vaguely psychedelic thrust, with a handful of groups having a sci-fi or dreamlike aesthetic.

Key players include Champagne Champagne, THEESatisfaction and top-ranking Shabazz Palaces. Now it's time to add Metal Chocolates to the list, the nascent duo comprised of producer/vocalist OC Notes and rapper Rik Rude.

Metal Chocolates' debut self-titled album comes out in waves, starting Friday, the same night the group plays Neumos on Capitol Hill, with Truckasauras and Viper Creek Club.

The most experimental tracks on "Metal Chocolates" are "Pioneer Square Powder" and "Grand Theft Audio," adjoined mood pieces that thrust the listener into a jostling junkie throng, and a frantic episode of "COPS." The former is a dense audio collage of people coughing and sniffing. The latter finds Rude breathlessly narrating a car chase over fast-paced hand drums. By the time those are over, the sleepy guitar of the next track "LFL — Looking For Love" is a welcome respite.

Far from your typical rappity-rap experience, "Metal Chocolates" is inspired by the grimy bustle of downtown Seattle's Pioneer Square and, among other things, the weird utopia of Willy Wonka and the "Chocolate Factory" films (perhaps the inspiration for the duo's name).

Wonka's world figures into the title of the hypnotic "Glass Elevators," and the duo intersperses movie dialogue throughout the album. The 12 tracks incorporate radio theater, stream-of-consciousness soul and loosely arranged rap music into a fusion that doesn't attempt to explain itself, it just is.

The best song is either "Opium of Love," where OC Notes channels Mos Def's jazz-mumble singing style to lusty effect, or "Afro Egypt," a throbbing soul-house number that seems to occur in a darkened aviary, birds chirping, shadows flitting. On "Afro Egypt," Rude raps about kingdoms and eagles in a style that seems like free association, but with too many syllables not to have been written out before. He then rhetorically asks, "Breakers in the building: have you seem 'em?"

The image could mean hip-hop was there — if you saw it.

"Metal Chocolates" will be released gradually, with 100 gift boxes available at Neumos — including a "Metal Chocolates" download, cassette tape, and various art projects such as custom gold chocolate coins. Official online and vinyl albums are planned for next month. - Seattle Times

All week Ann Powers and The Seattle Times' Andrew Matson are having coffee with people in Seattle's fertile rap scene. We're calling the series Grind and Shine

ARTISTS: Another day, another downloadable bundle of songs from Seattle's OC Notes (Otis Calvin, III). The 25-year-old producer/singer/rapper is Seattle's combination Madlib and Mos Def. Such reductive comparisons don't do him justice — but will get you within rock-throwing distance of his woozy style, which moves fluidly from hip-hop to radio theater to house music.

It's all soul music to Notes, who pumps it out from his underground studio in Seattle's OK Hotel, at the downtown edge of the city, next to the ocean. He has put out three albums this year, including standout work with MC Rik Rude (Ricky Reams, also in popular synth-rap group Fresh Espresso) — a psychedelic hip-hop project called Metal Chocolates. Rik is as stream-of-consciousness with his rhymes as Notes is with his beats — apparently, anyway; it could all be more composed than we know. In Seattle, high school students and recent grads apprentice themselves to Notes. MCs try and fail to freestyle alongside Rik. Metal Chocolates might fit next to the spaced-out vibe of locals Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction, but is its own thing, starry-eyed while rooted to the anxiety of Pioneer Square and its bustling drug and alcohol casualties.
- NPR