There’s a particular kind of brain spiral that happens at 2:17 a.m. You’re replaying a conversation from 2019, planning your five-year trajectory, imagining your enemies thriving out of spite, and somehow also convinced a minor typo will end your career. It’s not quite anxiety, not quite ambition. It’s more like your mind has decided to screen a horror marathon where you are both the protagonist and the monster.
That’s basically the thesis of Spitting The Tea: A Beautiful Horror, the six-track EP from Bay Area independent artist Tacer. And instead of pretending that overthinking is a cute personality quirk, he turns it into the central villain of the project.
The EP opens with “Villain,” which does not so much introduce itself as kick the door off its hinges. The production is dark, fast, and cinematic in a way that feels less “spooky Halloween playlist” and more “psychological thriller where the soundtrack is actively judging you.” From the first beat, it’s clear what Tacer’s aiming for: UK grime cadence slammed into West Coast bounce at high speed. And it works.
The beat carries that grimy, syncopated urgency; tight drums, heavy bass, a sense that something is about to go slightly wrong, while still riding with that unmistakable Bay Area groove. It’s global and local at the same time. You can hear the grime influence in the rhythmic precision of his flow, but the swagger? That’s West Coast through and through.
Vocally, Tacer leans hard into dense, multi-syllabic rhyme patterns. He raps like someone who has spent a concerning amount of time thinking about internal rhyme schemes. The delivery is quick but controlled, like he’s pacing himself through chaos instead of being swallowed by it. It’s technical without becoming a homework assignment. Importantly, there are hooks. Actual hooks. The kind that makes you replay a track not just to “study the bars,” but because it slaps.
What elevates the EP beyond a cool fusion experiment is the concept. A Beautiful Horror frames ambition and overthinking as something monstrous; not in a cartoonish way, but in the “your brain won’t shut up and it’s kind of ruining your life” way. The horror imagery isn’t aesthetic wallpaper. It functions as a metaphor.
Each of the six tracks plays a role in that arc. The opening feels confrontational, almost defiant. There’s bravado, as this is still rap, but it’s the kind of bravado that’s aware of the cracks underneath. As the project unfolds, the tone shifts subtly. The energy doesn’t disappear, but it gets more introspective. You can feel the tug-of-war between ambition and burnout.
“Spitting The Tea” as a lead single makes perfect sense because it’s the distilled essence of the EP: confidence under pressure. It’s radio-ready in structure, but it doesn’t sand down the edges to get there. The grit remains. The urgency remains. It feels like a statement, not just “I’m back,” but “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
And that’s the bigger takeaway here. Tacer sounds in control. Not just technically proficient, but conceptually focused. The blend of UK grime cadence and Bay Area tempo doesn’t feel like a gimmick; it feels lived in. He’s not borrowing aesthetics; he’s synthesizing them.
Spitting The Tea: A Beautiful Horror is ultimately about the mind under stress, about chasing something bigger while wrestling your own worst thoughts. It’s tense, energetic, occasionally unsettling and intentionally so. The horror isn’t cheap thrills. It’s the ambition that won’t let you sleep. And honestly? That’s a monster most of us recognize.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
