Ray Lugar and The Collective Force Drop New Single

Built like a Black Sabbath song. Executed with Black Flag energy. Adorned with a Public Enemy-style punch for good measure. You could say that there are a lot of influences in play in the new single and music video “Paper Cha$e” from Ray Lugar and The Collective Force and you’d be right, but to categorize this track alongside the litany of hybrid songs catching hype out of the American underground simply wouldn’t be giving it the credit its players have earned. “Paper Cha$e” is as hard a hit as you can get in 2020, and thanks to Ray Lugar and The Collective Force, it feels like a smash. 

The video for this single is abrasively punkish and steeped in the old school hip-hop mentalities that once drove forth a generation of rappers to the barricades – only to find their music watered-down by commercial interests a little more than a decade later.

There’s no interest in conformity in the structure of this song; right from the get-go, the tonal presence of the instrumentation is at war with the silence while the vocal is defining its message in crystal clear terms. Predictable platitudes and silly alt-rock metaphors? You’d better look elsewhere – these guys are the real deal. 

If you’re looking for quality indie hop-hop that doesn’t care what critics or the press is going to think of it in terms of marketability, the beautifully brutish “Paper Cha$e” from Ray Lugar and The Collective Force should be all you need to get high this fall. Lugar leads the charge like a general summoning his troops for a battle of the ages here, and whether you’ve heard his name before reading this article or not, he presents himself as the ferocious frontman this genre has been lacking in the last couple of years beyond debate. 

Zachary Rush