The Last Emperor is one of those names that flashes through underground consciousness and disappears again. "Secret Wars," which circulated in the late 90s, is legend among diggers — Marvel characters as MC battles, written by an MC who knew exactly what he was doing. He never completely vanished but he never became an institution either. "Mainline" is interesting because Madsol Desar takes on everything: beats, mix, cuts, cover. And he opens and closes the album with live fragments — Fat Beats NYC at the start, Boulevard Connection 1999 at the end. Ten full tracks plus short skits: "The Falcon," "Captain Jack," "Time & Space," "Jungle Catz," "Hell's Kitchen," "King Conan." This is Last Emperor territory — characters, movies, historical figures as image material for rap narratives. Madsol Desar doesn't stay in the background, he builds the entire environment Last Emperor moves through. That's the point: the album works because DJ and MC don't compete, they build a world together. Train skits, Walkman interludes, crowd fragments — that's mixtape thinking in album form.
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