Skrilla: Zombie Love Kensington Paradise (Deluxe) Album Review

Throughout the project, those vocal qualifiers are paired with a production style that’s become synonymous with Philly’s new wave of street music. From Ot7 Quanny to Hood Tali to Lil Buckss and beyond, the city’s rendition of drill is characterized by its minimalism: ominous chord loops, very sharp claps, spaced-out 808s, and not much else. That leaves ample room for Skrilla’s scattered musings. “Palo Mayombe,” which follows a similar template, continues Skrilla’s years-long interest in West and Central African spirituality—something he says he’s practiced at home since childhood. When he fantasizes about hopping out of his car to shoot an adversary, he stresses that he’s protected by Ogun, to whom he sacrifices chickens (if you follow him on Instagram, you’ve seen the aftermath). On the slightly more uptempo Prod.Yari-produced “NYFW,” he elects for a more animated flow and raises his voice to the point of cracking.

Zombie Love‘s most fun addition to its deluxe version is “ABC,” a song that was initially performed as an On The Radar freestyle in January of 2024 where Skrilla—exercising his love for spectacle—hilariously wore a brown Viking beard mask. Produced by Broward County’s Trippy XVI, Skrilla builds on the age-old hip-hop tradition of rapping your way through the alphabet. In his version, E is for the ecstasy he enjoys, R is for running on the plug, and, of course, Z is for ZombieLand. He cleverly breaks up the predictable nature of this formula by periodically repeating back letters to himself as to suggest he actually might be genuinely freestyling. The feverish way he powers through songs frames Skrilla as something of a twisted rap jester—a person who harnesses dark forces while appearing either indifferent or amused.

It doesn’t always click, mostly due to his inability to trim the fat. If most of Zombie Love Kensington Paradise—deluxe or original—had observed this balance of Philly drill, African spirituality, perfectly paced flows, and a healthy amount of shit-talking, it would be a much stronger project. Unfortunately, Skrilla often prioritizes collaboration with fellow upstarts, hard-to-turn-down features, and random experimentation. On “Maybach Seats” and “On That Money,” popular New Orleans rapper Rob49 throws around inconsequential lines; each song would have been better without him, but the way today’s street rap ecosystem operates, cross-country networking is essential to extend one’s reach. Lil Baby sounds lost on “Talk,” where he tries to adopt Skrilla’s start-and-stop approach to make his voice fit on a sinister Philly drill beat. “F.W.A.G.” and “Wockstar” are attempts at making melodic music aimed at a love interest, but both feel like bad impressions of South Florida’s Loe Shimmy.

Despite the missteps, Skrilla impresses when he dances through harrowing beats, coloring outside the lines to bring something jovial to what is otherwise sinister. He’s a rap weirdo following a long lineage of Philadelphia hip-hop outliers. At face value, maybe you don’t align his output to predecessors like Santigold, Tierra Whack (who has repeatedly shouted him out), or Lil Uzi Vert (the two have a handful of unofficial collaborations), but he’s closer to them than he is Meek Mill, Beanie Sigel, or even Ot7 Quanny. It’s just gonna take a little more time to find out whether his music will outshine his excessive use of shock value. So much music in the realm of drill already depends on caricature to accentuate its validity. If ZombieLand and its denizens are sources of Skrilla’s love and the cherished community he claims it to be, he should probably consider ways of exhibiting that relationship that run counter to treating it like a Youtuber conducting hood safaris.