Image via Arthur Alcantar
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.
I’ve made up my mind: P-Lo—the Filipino-American, Bay Area rap savant and former Heartbreak Gang overlord—is Northern California’s franchise centerpiece. Think Steph Curry to the Golden State Warriors.
Both ballers (in a rap and basketball context) entered the game around the same time in the late aughts, when a globalized technological leap spurred on by San Francisco-based social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram happened. From that point on, they’ve each steadily built up their reputations across different arenas throughout the 2010s—one with ongoing NBA championship parades, the other with never-ending NBA championship parade anthems.
But it goes deeper than their career milestones. Steph Curry and P-Lo (real name Paolo Rodriguez) truly go bar for bar, and have developed an organic connection as Bay Area underdogs. It’s hard to fathom right now, but both Steph and P-Lo were once dismissively overlooked for not fitting the part. Steph was the mid-major darling with frail ankles who was notoriously passed up for Tyreke Evans, Ricky Rubio and Johnny Flynn in the 2009 Draft, and P-Lo was the unproven Asian American community college student with unrealized rap aspirations on the furthest edge of Contra Costa County.
So much has changed since 2009, when Curry was first drafted to the fledgling Warriors, and 2010, when P-Lo’s HBK counterpart and co-conspirator, IAMSU!, released the nascent crew’s first major mixtape, Su! The Right Thing. Despite being one of HBK’s lead producers, mostly laying the audio foundation for the group’s rapid national ascension (their breakout single, “UP!,” helped to establish a fresh Bay Area sound of stripped down party bangers) P-Lo’s solo rap stature was miniscule at the time.
P-Lo wouldn’t drop his first individual tape, MBMGC, until the summer of 2012. He followed that up the following year with MBMGC2 in 2013, which further positioned the Filipino artist as a leading voice in the region. He broke into the Billboard Hot 100 multiple times in that period, too, most notably as the maestro behind Wiz Khalifa’s “Bout Me” and Yo Gotti’s “Act Right” — the latter of which still stands among the most quintessential soundscapes of that rap decade. The influence from P-Lo’s sideshow-friendly production can still be heard in everything that would succeed it, particularly in DJ Mustard’s evolution. Indeed, the Crenshaw producer spent time around the up-and-coming Bay Area crew (and has often been accused of swagger jacking the Bay Area sound that P-Lo forged during that time, though P-Lo and HBK Gang themselves have often denied that claim and have always maintained a respectful connection with their Southern California brethren).
In retrospect, P-Lo had certainly defined his own trademark production style with keyboard-heavy, bass-forward tracks that mixed Hot Boyz-era Cash Money Records with darkly-synthed Bay Area mobb music from the mid 90s at a crawling-tempo. As someone who was around for the rise (and eventual disbanding) of HBK Gang, P-Lo’s individual ascension was far from a guarantee, and his blow up has been well-deserved and a long time in the making. His peers in Kehlani, Sage the Gemini, IAMSU! and G-Eazy were often the focal points with chart-topping singles of their own (many of which P-Lo graced as a producer). But as a leading rapper and figure head? Nah. To put it in basketball terms, P-Lo was never the blue chip lottery prospect that many in his class were perceived to be; he was a second rounder who hustled his way into a starting role, and then became indispensable at his playmaking position. Look at him now.
This past February, while Steph highlighted NBA All-Star Weekend in San Francisco with his usual airbending tricks and marksmanship — earning his second NBA All-Star Game MVP nod — P-Lo was equally active, putting on his Bay Area uniform (literally, he co-released a Western Conference-themed jersey that weekend) and running the point for the region’s rap culture. He captained a group of local celebrities and party goers who boarded a private ferry off the coast of Alameda island en route to the shimmering, skyscraper-lined port of San Francisco with a live DJ set. He released a limited edition public transit card in partnership with the Bay Area’s transit system. He printed out a physical map of Bay Area food and culture recommendations. He hosted a basketball game at the recently unveiled and Nike-sponsored mural of Kobe Bryant at the legendary Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
P-Lo did it all for For The Soil, his latest album, backed by EMPIRE and the Golden State Warriors, who launched the world’s first ever NBA franchise-owned record label, Golden State Entertainment. The nine-track collaboration album is a hyphy billet-doux for “the soil where them rappers be getting they lingo from” a la E-40. This time, P-Lo reverts back to his true form as a producer. From Goapele to Karri, ALLBLACK to 22nd Jim, Ovrkast. to Lil Bean, P-Lo has rightfully assumed his role as a curator and distributor at this stage in his career, passing his mic around the Bay for a group project that, at least to my Bay Area-calibrated ears, is quietly among the best, most selfless full-length efforts to come out of the region in quite some time. And it slaps.
In the way Kendrick Lamar’s GNX was a high-profile attempt to serenade Los Angeles — with a deliberate curation of the region’s voices through its ranging cast of characters — P-Lo’s For The Soil is a distillation of the Bay’s present and future in hip-hop. The album never swerves into a different lane, never loses itself in the pursuit of something beyond its purpose or audience. It’s an intergenerational Bay Area function on record, a family reunion in a recording booth. And it slaps. Throughout, the album introduces a neo-wave of Bay Area artistry to listeners (Japanese-Panamanian newcomer Seiji Oda is straight gas on “Too Wavy” and Karri, the promising Filipino R&B sleeper from Oakland, is velvety AF on “Suede”) while simultaneously honoring the traditional iterations of the region (Too $hort rapping inside of a steakhouse).
In an epoch of regionally-untethered slop and paycheck features, For The Soil is the opposite, a Baytriotic assemblage made clear with the opening track, “Yeah,” in which the conductor proclaims “This for the soil nah this is aint for the mainstream” over Smeeze-inducing snare drums.
After a monthly sprint of performances, an album release party at Filipino fast food restaurant Señor Sisig and even suiting up for the NBA’s official All-Star Celebrity Game at Oakland Arena, P-Lo broke down his playbook over the phone and announced another upcoming album with Vallejo’s LaRussell.
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