Zhang is most potent on Hunched Jack’s early tracks. By the end of the first bar, he’s already stepped into his persona—the damaged, reclusive anti-hero. “Snuggled in my bedroom counting money until my hands are sore,” he sings like a twee Future on “Parrot,” the tape’s soft-edged opener. “Going to the corner store together to buy snacks/You’d borrow change from me when you didn’t have enough,” he warbles on “Brother,” lamenting long-severed family ties. “We used to have a warm home, but now, like a tree falling and the monkeys scattering/When disaster strikes, even the slowest bird flies.” On “Human,” he’s self-deprecating and disaffected like Bladee, but his moaning delivery sounds more like Carti over Ferraro and Glasear’s rage beat. Young rappers around the world share these MCs’ styles in their DNA, but few have Zhang’s ability to recombine their influence in new ways. Zhang’s vocals tend to be so slurred and laden with effects that his lyrics are hard to parse, even for native Mandarin speakers. But if you read his lyrics, you will find intense imagery and startling turns of phrase to reveal cracked pieces of his inner world.
Hunched Jack Mixtape loses some steam on the home stretch, but there are heavy hitters on its pluggy, low-key back half, too. “Avatar,” featuring Surf Gang MC Harto Falion and produced by evilgiane, cements Zhang’s place as an agile insider in an insular group half a world away. As he and his guest go bar for bar, their stoned, behind-the-beat flows sync up seamlessly across the language barrier. And “Givenchy” sets Zhang’s staccato quarter-note monotone against the tactile machine-gun hi-hats of another giane beat, this one built in collaboration with NYC plugg producer Elipropper. In fact, the majority of the tape’s instrumentals come from sets of two producers who, in most cases, balance each other out and push each other further. Along with his swooping vocal inflections and gleeful tag, this stylistic solidity allows Zhang to pick up the thread that’s run from his trollish early work and pull it forward. Backed by these major-league beats, he sounds more assured of his charmingly anti-social aura than ever.
