Hyper Sniper

Like many rappers in the area, Hyper Sniper seems to take his conceptual cues from Tech N9ne. The cover art of his latest full-length, The Last Living American Patriot, finds the face of the husky white rapper camouflaged with a putrid-looking green substance — a sort of externalized sinus infection. The message: Sniper is sick. His brooding, downcast glare completes the portrait of inner torment. This is the exact style of morbid, existential hip-hop that has for years attracted alternative-rock fans to Tech. Sniper introduces his Tecca Ninna persona on the hook of the album’s first track, “I’m On That”: They ain’t dissin’ us/When they get a jaw snapped/Some wicked sicko pyscho killer shit/I’m all that. Sniper’s actual delivery, for better or worse, is a far cry from Tech’s tornadic yarns. His growling syncopations sit somewhere between C-Bo and local rapper Kredulous as he drifts between emotional states. He goes from acting as remorseless as a Killa City gangster to becoming mockingly self-aware — sometimes within the same track. He is not, to be sure, a lyrical Kimbo Slice, as he playfully brags to listeners. Nor is he the best rapper on the album, as the remix of “That’s Us” demonstrates. (That award should rightfully go to Psycho Jesus.) But Sniper is charismatic enough and occasionally witty enough — Check my dick for bite marks/See what you haters do to me — to carry the album’s lackluster production from boring to bearable.