There’s a target on Mach-Hommy’s back. Dead or alive. Reward unknown; although the protraction of techno-feudalism and post-colonial hegemony are probably solid enough guesses. You ask the Haitian-American rapper and record producer yourself. As revealed in his recent public service plea, following shortly after the release of his fourteenth solo album #RICHAXXHAITIAN, there appear to be obscure industry forces at play attempting to curtail the propagation of his message conveyance. Self-released on the 17th May, one day before the momentous annual celebration of Haitian Flag Day, the 17-track project completes the New Jerseyan’s autochthonous album tetralogy—also inclusive of H.B.O. (2016), and 2021’s Pray for Haiti and Balens Cho (Hot Candles)—and was preceded by the eponymous lead single in early May.

Too bad that Google managed to botch the title track’s music video premiere on Mach-Hommy’s own YouTube channel, offering no conclusive explanation for it at all, leading to assume salacious intents behind the ‘unprecedented’ glitch. Too bad that mere days after the album’s public streaming release on DSPs, it mysteriously evaporated from leading outlet Spotify—the latter citing a takedown request from the artist’s camp itself, categorically denied by the Griselda syndicate in the aforementioned video explainer. In both cases, literally involving the largest streaming platform in the world (YouTube), and the on-demand audio service with the highest amount of global paying subscribers (Spotify), the explanations furnished left little to write home about.

In fact, Google’s troubleshooting yielded a complete and laughable non-starter. As outlined in the clip by Mach-Hommy, the internal investigation conducted by multiple layers of YouTube reps upon his flagging of the loss of admin privileges on his own account, as well as the temporary erasure of subscribers during the music video premiere window, returned a pathetic ‘we’ve got no clue as to what happened there, sorry’. Conversely, Spotify dug deeper into its more generous void of incongruous wiggle room in delivering their version of the root cause analysis, owing to the (wholly purposeful) digital record industry’s protocol entanglement. As mentioned, after both the Swedish streaming giant and an unnamed digital distributor washed their hands off by claiming the withdrawal request came from Mach-Hommy’s people, the East Coast MC was informed that his product, the #RICHAXXHAITIAN LP, was missing its Universal Product Code (UPC). An ontological fallacy, for not only was the release perfectly available on all other DSPs at the time, but as Mach rightfully cites in the video, the project wouldn’t have made it to Spotify servers in the first place without it.

Where affairs get even more nefarious is in the aggravating insult provided by the parties at play, who mentioned a now-deleted post by an faceless, nameless X user, interpreting #RICHAXXHAITIAN‘s disappearance from Spotify as a marketing stunt from Mach-Hommy, and fomenting doubts as to who watches the watchdogs in the online pursuits of the truth. The X user alleged that the MC’s strategy was to entice fans by sampling the album as a taster over release weekend, in the hope that they would turn to his webstore to purchase exclusive physical formats—going for a much higher price point. Once again, all of this getting debunked by the artist himself. Putting two and two together, one can’t help but think this is some sort of poetic injustice for a lyricist as concerned with historical revisionism, reparations, the Haitian diaspora, and the plague of colonialism in his ancestral country as he is. After all, retaliations might have assumed newer and more impenetrable forms in the modern age, but they are surely far from a holding pattern of inaction.

This all transpires as being particularly suspicious on account of not just the prolific rapper’s imperialistic establishment antagonism, but also his worthy industry literacy within contemporary digital music practices. Yes he is an actual multi-lingual prodigy thanks to his diverse cultural provenance, yet have you considered that the contemporary record industry’s intentionally dubious language is an idiom he can tally up as yet another atypical string in his bow? When he took legal DMCA action to have all of his works removed from online lyrics providers such as Genius in 2019, he knew he was stirring up a pretty big hornet’s nest. You will likely not be surprised to learn that Genius has long been finessing a number of licensing deals with DSPs under the hood; with one of the largest ones being with, guess whom? Spotify.

This is perhaps a good moment to afford us to elaborate on such content provisioning agreements. We wish we could go into more specifics, but please trust us when we say that we get Mach-Hommy. Without even delving into licensing deals involving the actual sound recordings couched within digital releases, aka the masters we all end up listening on the client side, the narrower lyrics and compositions provisioning business itself is riddled with enough jungly inaccessibility. Not unlike the wider record industry ecosystem, it’s a self-referential distribution funnel washed in a sea of conduits and intermediaries. Rightsholders—such as the self-released and self-published Mach-Hommy—are typically forced to strike deals with certain providers supplying other providers to at least a few degrees of separation before even making it to the end-consumer platforms such as Genius.

Not only does each of these agents retain a significant double-digit kickback on any royalty exploitation event, but within the lyrics consumption realm specifically, these are the kind of publishing deals operating under so-called ‘most-favored-nation’ (MFN) terms. In other words, allowing no room for negotiation or clout at the dealings table whatsoever. What’s even more disheartening within such copyright systems and their application within modern digital platforms is that legal frameworks around royalty rates and statutory regulations are a total mess. Most royalty payments are still remitted via lump sum settlements and upfront reconciliations, with little to no consideration for the actual mechanical reproduction figures for each work. In a way not too dissimilar from Mach’s warlord-stricken gang-centric Caribbean homeland, each end-user platform is free to enact their own price-regulated cartel, benefitting from the lack of international regulation and governance around fair trade.

Yet Mach-Hommy resists. He educates himself, learns the language of the oppressor, and fights with whatever he can. That’s why he’s wanted. That’s why he has a target on his back. And a very concrete countermeasure he enacts is seizing back control of his own art. What he does is that he increases the average consumption price point for each of his superfans, by selling physical formats for three-to-four digit $ price tags. For those versions, he retools the tracklist, too. In #RICHAXXHAITIAN‘s case, track number two “ANTONOMASIA” is titled “SOBRIQUET”, enlisting a guest verse from Tha God Fahim instead of Roc Marciano (allegedly a vox populi decision, as the rapper held a poll during a listening party earlier in the year). “BON BAGAY” at number four is a vinyl-exclusive, while the streaming-available “SONJE” is pushed back on the sequencing to act as the album’s coda. Crucially, “SUR LE PONT D’AVIGNON”, indeed available on streaming services, is wiped off the vinyl version as a quintessential middle finger to French post-colonial forces. Elsewhere on the waxing, “XEROX CLAT” gets retitled to “XEROX TWATS”, while “COPY COLD” and “PADON”—renamed “PARDON” with a Mach-Hommy verse in Tha God Fahim’s stead—are backtracked by a different instrumental beat than their digital counterparts.

In a press statement accompanying #RICHAXXHAITIAN, the wordsmith made the following clear:

I’ve always wanted to rep for Haiti and the cultural and intellectual richness we’ve provided the world. From our musical styles like kontradans that have influenced world music, our natural resources which provide so much raw material for so many important advancements in technology, our thinkers that pioneered philosophical movements and Black pride, and our spiritual leaders who kept the religious traditions of Guinea alive and intact, the religious traditions of Ayiti…

Musically, the album is a masterpiece. It’s a dense, wordy, intricate, disparate, and sticky affair—all at the same time. There’s a glacial undertone throughout the production that exhumes a dejected haziness fitting like a glove atop of Mach-Hommy’s boneless and contorted flows. Complication here is being offered as an act of resistance. Those who really listen, get it. In reviewing the record, good ole Professor Skye made the case for obscurity and incomprehension as a purposeful creative strategy for Mach-Hommy to fence off shoehorning and diluting industrial gentrification. While at the same doing justice to the richly profound social and cultural heritage of Haiti. It’s a valid heuristic, one that enables the New Jersey-native to always be one step ahead of reductive law enforcement. In his line of work, that happens to be private hedge fund-backed technology companies, purporting themselves as the arbiters of an emancipated creative ecosystem, fostering democratized access to all art. Sur le pont, d’Avignon…

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. And don’t forget to pray for Haiti.

AV