Image via Michael Tinley
Dr. Dre’s The Chronic being listed as one of the best Bay Area rap albums is why Alan Chazaro doesn’t trust anything generated by AI.
“Alternative.” “Mellow.” Lyrical.” “Raw.” Those are a few of the bland categories on Spotify used to delineate a rapper’s sound — a generic silhouette for listeners seeking to discover their next favorite flavor via flavorless algorithm.
One thing that Spotify doesn’t have a bot-generated playlist for? “Michelin-approved rap.” That is, a gold-toothed spitter who eats at Michelin-starred establishments and makes songs and videos about their posh dining experiences. A literal Rap Caviar, but in real life.
Luckily, South Florida’s buttery emcee Blvck Svm (government name Ben Glover) is one such lyrical connoisseur. Having dropped michelinman in early November, the laid back, silky rhymer has quickly asserted himself as somewhere between post-Drakeo and post-Action Bronson – conceptually blending his love of high-end, world-class cooking with luxury raps.
The 13-song, 37-minute LP pays direct tribute to dietary sources ranging from sumac (a spice from the Middle East made from the ground berries of a sumac bush, and the appellation of more than a few renowned eateries in Catalonia, Iceland and Hong Kong) to acorns (a reference to an acorn diet that Spanish farmers use to feed livestock in order to produce Iberico pork). The album’s namesake is a clear nod to the Michelin guide, an enchiridion of fine dining recommendations dating back to 1926, when the French tire company first hired “restaurant inspectors” to anonymously rate eateries in hopes of promoting would-be travelers to hit the road. Nowadays, Michelin-starred restaurants have flourished on multiple continents and are the most coveted recognition among chefs.
Though Svm doesn’t cook inside a kitchen for a living, he does cook on a beat, having curated his own playlist titled “prime cuts” with the cover image portraying finely marbled slabs of meat. And michelinman largely lives up to that ethos. The bulk of the records omit catchy hooks and filler, instead opting for a smorgasbord of smooth, at-times overly straightforward narratives about Margiela apparel and a “mouth full of karats” (or maybe carrots?) Much like an exceptional meal, there is no wasted space, with the seasoned emcee serving up measured slices of poetic reflection alongside a healthy offering of refined, borderline-symphonic melodies.
Notably, Svm had no real experience in fine dining before deciding to make the album. He was a rapper doing his thing over jazzy, subdued instrumentals sans a penchant for pre-fixe menus. He first appeared on most radars, including mine, back in 2020 with his meditative debut single, “bleach.” The track offered a panoramic vista of oceanside relaxation, understated hustle and Svm talking over tinkling piano keys, a harp-like instrumental, and a ratcheting bassline.
The enigmatic wordsmith – who, in my memory, rarely showed his face in any of his early music releases – followed that up with a slew of singles over the next four years, including “gristle”, “fuji freestyle” and “brackish”. Today, he’s built up his subterranean following to over 900,000 monthly listeners on the aforementioned Swedish music app, with his top three songs totaling over 50 million streams combined. And yet, he remains a simple man, with not-so-simple dining pleasures.
In the Miami Vice-on-lean single “gossamer,” Svm casually alludes to a cut of “Takamori A5 with the tallow.” Good people, I worked as a full-time food journalist in San Francisco for a couple of years, and I’ve never come across such a cut of protein. The wagyu beef is graded using the Japan Meat Grading Association’s system — on a scale of A to C (a “yield grade” based on the livestock’s weight, with A being top-in-class) and one to five (a “quality grade” based on the firmness, color, texture and marbling of the cut, with five rating as the highest).
This isn’t some McAmerican Quarter Pounder burger patty. This isn’t even the best New York ribeye you’ve ever tasted on your best nights. Takamori A5 — also known as “drunken wagyu,” since the cattle are fed with a sake mash in a specific area of Japan — is a prize-winning, $209-and-up per 10 oz. slice of euphoria. And Svm devoured it (accompanied with tallow, a gelatinous cattle fat), while facetiously noting “you cannot find this shit at Sam’s.” He follows that with references to a Hungarian breed of pigs, carrying the remains of a slaveholder in his fanny pack, and clever, kitchen-friendly metaphors like “my bread started rising, the hustle the yeast.”
When thinking of food-related raps, I pride myself on documenting the ways in which rappers, particularly in the Bay, have often used food as a source of slang and income. There’s the obvious Larry June obsession with organic smoothies and oranges – not to mention his co-ownership of Honeybear Boba in Frisco. Going further back, Luniz invented the “ice cream man,” a ‘90s rap character which was later beefed over with Master P of No Limit Records. You had Shock G (RIP) bragging about getting busy in Burger King bathrooms. And if you’re talking about the pioneers of food-rap crossover, you have to mention E-40’s endlessly inventive word salads that have fed generations of rappers and fans with kitchen-based verbiage like “bread,” “gouda,” “lettuce,” “panini” and “cheddar,” along with his undisputed entrepreneurialism in the food and beverage industry (the self-anointed “Goon With The Spoon” actually sells ice cream, burritos, wine, malt liquor, tequila, Mexican cerveza, slurricane, Philly Cheese Steak-flavored sausages, lumpia and more).
Of course, you have a gang of peripheral foodies like P-Lo, who recently soundtracked a national Wingstop commercial, and Kamayiah, who’s breakout freshman mixtape A Good Night In the Ghetto featured an album cover of her delivering a bottle of Hennessy and potato chips to a group of eternally indebted homies. Food is everywhere in rap, if you take the time to look for it (earlier this year at KQED, I commissioned an artist to draw a bunch of my favorite California rappers eating the foods that they rapped about in their music.) And, of course, the aforementioned Bronson, a former chef and full-time gourmand, kicked off the modern iteration of the trend about a decade ago.
But even among the pantheon of hungry emcees to put their recipes on wax, you won’t encounter another Blvck Svm — a bon vivant who has so overtly, so intentionally, so lovingly and obsessively given himself over to the culinary arts. Fresh off his private food tour with stops that included Nonesuch in Oklahoma City, Nisei in San Francisco and Asador Bastian in Chicago, I chopped it up on a cell phone with the Southern-raised rapper-turned-gastronome about his love for the gourmet aspects of life.