Model Home - One Year (LP)

Model Home’s One Year captures a restless Washington, DC duo hitting record while the ideas are still warm. Rapper NAPPYNAPPA and producer p.cain had already churned through a stack of DIY tapes before this 2020 set gathered the sparks in one place, and the result feels like a documentary of process as much as a proper album. You hear room tone, clipped signals and snares that crunch like they’ve been dragged across concrete, but what sticks is how alive it all feels. It’s improvised, off the cuff and oddly tender at the same time, the kind of tape-scorched hip hop that rewards close listening yet works just as well blasting out of a tinny house speaker at 2 am.

The record came out on Disciples, who have a knack for spotlighting artists working at the fringes of genre, and it landed with a quiet confidence. Critics clocked it quickly. The Wire and Pitchfork both flagged the pair’s approach as something special, not just for the noise and the gnarl, but for how the songs cohere in spite of the chaos. You don’t get tidy hooks or big chorus moments. Instead, NAPPYNAPPA threads a free-associative flow through p.cain’s clattering loops and dub-sunk bass, pivoting from street-corner observations to dream logic in a breath. He sounds like he’s building the meaning while he raps, letting phrases breathe, then snapping them back into the pocket.

P.cain’s production is the secret weapon. There’s a handmade tactility to it that’s hard to fake. Samples are smeared and re-sampled, drum machines misbehave, and feedback is treated like another instrument. The mixes leave space for accidents, which is part of the thrill. A hi-hat will suddenly lurch forward, or a synth smear will open like a trapdoor. You can feel the duo learning and pushing in real time, which suits a compilation that spans their first burst of activity. It’s not a greatest hits package. It’s a sketchbook where most of the sketches turned out to be keepers.

What keeps One Year from feeling like an archive dump is the pacing. The sequence lets the harsher, blown-out sections crash against moments of eerie calm. A low-lit passage will creep in after a barrage, and you’ll catch the room breathing again. That ebb and flow gives the record the arc of a late-night set rather than a playlist of highlights, and it makes repeat plays addictive. The details start to pop on the second or third spin. A ghosted vocal harmony tucked deep left. A drum pattern that stumbles on purpose, then finds a new stride. A bassline that seems to be recorded through the next room’s wall.

There’s a lineage here that runs through DC’s DIY and go-go histories as much as rap’s avant edges. You hear echoes of noise scenes and dub laboratories, but nothing lands as a museum piece. It all feels specific to their corner of the city and the cheap gear on hand. That specificity is why One Year has stuck around, and why it’s become the entry point for so many listeners. If you’ve been browsing for Model Home vinyl, this is the one that gives you the lay of the land in one hit, and it’s the copy I point to when someone asks where to start.

On vinyl, the music breathes differently. The low end sits a little heavier, the grit feels more tactile, and the quiet stretches draw you closer. If you’re crate-digging or looking to buy Model Home records online, keep an eye out for a clean pressing of One Year vinyl. Shops that focus on adventurous hip hop and experimental electronics tend to file it proudly. I’ve seen it pop up in a Melbourne record store or two, which always makes me smile considering how fiercely local the source material feels. For anyone building a shelf of Model Home albums on vinyl, it earns its spot not as a completist’s artefact, but as a living document that still sounds current.

One Year works because it trusts the moment. The duo don’t sand off the edges, and they don’t pretend to have some grand plan. They show you how the ideas form, and they let the mess lead them somewhere new. That spirit is infectious. Put it on, sit with it, and let the room shift. If you’re digging around for vinyl records Australia-wide and stumble across this, take it home. It’ll change the way you think about what a rap record can be.