John Keenan builds a tower of truth on sprawling album, "Wreckage of the Past"
In a hip-hop landscape where trend chasing often dominates, John Keenan has gone the opposite direction. Wreckage of the Past is a sprawling, 18-track experience of independence & personal excavation. Written, produced, mixed, and mastered entirely by Keenan, the album is as uncompromising as it is ambitious. It fuses hip-hop with funk, jazziness, and orchestral textures.
Keenan, a veteran of the independent scene with roots stretching back to Kansas and now based in Arizona, has long championed his DIY ethos. Here, he takes it to the extreme. With no features and no ghostwriters, the record becomes a complete portrait of his vision creating something unfiltered, raw, and wholly his own. The production is slick, filled with live-sounding slap bass runs that give the songs bounce, while strings and brass add cinematic depth. That balance allows the 18 tracks to feel cohesive rather than bloated.
Lyrically, Keenan does not hold back. He wrestles openly with addiction, broken relationships and artistic redemption. He also manages to weave vulnerability into politically charged reflections (especially that RFK Jr. sample). His delivery is direct, his vocals pushed forward in the mix but never overpowering. Instead, they cut through with clarity and purpose, matching the gravity of his subject matter. There’s a sense of lived experience behind every word. This isn’t posturing, but rather a deeply personal outpouring from someone who has walked through fire and chosen to make music out of the ashes.
Keenan leans into the long-form album experience, building an arc that rewards patience and close listening. The funk grooves pull you in, the orchestral flourishes expand the soundscape, and the lyrical honesty keeps you grounded in the humanity at the core of it all. It’s rare to hear an album this ambitious feel so cohesive, but Keenan manages it with confidence and craft. As exciting as the record is, on repeated listens, it’s really his words and stories that kept us coming back for more.
A work of art in every sense, it stands as Keenan’s most powerful and fully realized project to date. It’s dense to say the least, but it’s legitimately uplifting at the end of the day. We urge you all to give it a play in full, but also to follow along to stay tuned for more!
Listen to “Wreckage of the Past”
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