If you like A Tribe Called Quest, you’ll love To Love a Phantom by Verb T & Vic Grimes.
Split into two acts, To Love a Phantom is a deeply immersive hip-hop double album that thrives on language itself. Across a considerable runtime, Verb T’s approach to wordplay, etymology and contradictions is rich with careful guest collaborators matching his flow and tone with purpose.
Act I carries a celebratory, round-table energy with veterans passing the mic around, with beats leaning into a cartoonish, Halloween-lit world, evoking old Scooby-Doo scenes and mid-century Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons with muted trumpets, xylophones, flutes and orchestral flourishes drifting in and out. Theatrical and playful, the beats by Vic Grimes feel like they’re winking at you from behind the veil as Verb T inhabits the role of the introvert phantom, an absent figure who slips sideways rather than confronting with a gentle, meditative pacing that encourages immersion, allowing moods and textures to wash over you and reveal small details in turns of phrases and sly rhymes. The cameos feel familial, the result of decades of shared history as T stretches his ideas about relationships, intimacy, clarity, connection and understanding. There’s humour, warmth and a sense of family with so much fun in the double meanings, clever puns and linguistic sleight of hand on display.
Verb T sits so naturally in these beats that his voice feels as essential as the drums, as he calmly dissects human behaviour, relationships and recurring archetypes with ease, with collaborators chosen not only for how they ride the beat, but who’s at home with what theme.
Farma G drifts through a meditation on ego with the calm wisdom of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Leaf Dog’s appearance is all smoky snakes and boom-bap betrayal, and Harry Shotta brings tension and dexterity with an effortlessly technical performance that feels even more relaxed than usual, as if T’s presence alone lowers everyone’s aggression.
Act II deepens the mood considerably, with shadowy production that feels more degraded, with blurry details and the cartoon colour drained away. Replaced by a ghostlier weight with dusty textures focussed on memory over performance and an intentional shift from the colourful costumes of Act I to real-world consequences, the second half feels less playful and more rooted in real loss and reflection. Minimal featuring TrueMendous is grief-stricken, subdued and devastating whilst Fliptrix introduces warm optimism on Rejuvenate with hopeful camaraderie.
The fact all of this comes from a single producer is massive. The album gives the impression of being built by a whole roster of beat-makers, but the staggering range of groove, texture and mood all comes from Vic Grimes with meticulously crafted beats full of character and detail. Rooted in boom-bap and unafraid to slow right down and sit with reflection, functioning as a tapestry for T to move through, the record is obsessed with writing that refuses to pin anything down too tightly, with each track becoming a jumping-off point for the listener to reflect on their own relationships, betrayals, miscommunications and patterns of behaviour. These are clearly Verb T’s lived experiences, but abstracted into universality with no neat conclusions. Authentic and curious, To Love a Phantom plays with the unsettling idea that truly knowing another person, or even yourself, may always remain just out of reach.
With everything unified by an eerie, ghostly atmosphere this is an album that absolutely rewards experiencing its full 80 minutes in solitude, something you sink into alone whether that’s on a long walk with headphones or sitting at home. Verb T runs through ideas and observations at such a pace that the album requires your full attention to keep up, with Vic Grimes’ beats evoking bats swooping overhead and shadows in the trees, spooky rather than frightening. T sounds completely natural, like a fish swimming in water not straining, just existing within his craft. The record is built around uncertainty and questioning rather than instructive wisdom, as an effortlessly accomplished rapper pulls you into a world built from language alone.