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With Hardships & Head Trips, King Rhythm has created a psychedelic journey. While this is a Hip-Hop record in its truest sense with hard beats and rhymes, leaving it there would only be covering half of the territory.

The album leads off with the epic opening double track, No Magic / Bangin' The Wall. This song pays tribute to Miles Davis's In A Silent Way period not only in name phrasing parallel of said album songs but in musical content as well, from the opening minimally phrased ascending ping notes to the drastic mid-song change. This is the chronicling of King Rhythm's past up to the present. An odd timed lement that transforms halfway to the guitar feedback wail of Bangin' the Wall.

Next, the densely layered headstrong Indie Rock challenge, Demolition Session 95, recalls a tense confrontation between King Rhythm and his devils advocate. The conflict is nixed with, "It's do you get it? Not does it get you."

Immediately, we're thrown into The Machinist. The track begins with a string and Rock section that segues into the main theme. With a noisy siren-like guitar squeal and Sonic Youth drones that evoke factory machinery, the song describes the bluring of polarities relinquished to time.

Following, In Operation features a guest appearance by Mush/Big Dada artist K-the-I???. The song is established with a classical string motif followed by a Wurlitzer beat thump into the swirling hook, "What will be the answer for the cancer come and take a chance or die blinded." The song ends with a time signature shifting groove based on the original motif.

The next two songs work in tandem. The Victims Fall & Our Hero follow the story of devolution and subsequent mental decline of a semi-fictious character. In Victims, the character moves from politically cynical to a nightmarishly apocalyptic view of society deepened to a battle against his own hallucinatory self. Our Hero furthers the saga as the character wakes up and finds himself transformed into an apathetic, paranoid, morose figure, a reflection of what society has done to him. Here we follow him as he ventures out into the city night.

After, Future Museum epitomizes the dreamscape, atmospherically jazzy until the end explodes with a swirled-up and tripped-out Rock escape.

Mad And Hating is the surprisingly simple and catchy track. Its boom bap beats, guitar bamphs, and fuzzy melody lay the perfect footing for King Rhythm's tongue in cheek, hater sympathizing anthem.

The album's instrumental closer, Current floor, rides like a static wave breaking out. It's the final summation.