All photos via ICE COLD ENTERTAINMENT / Epic Records
Steven Louis bought the clean version.
It’s admittedly not as easy on the ears as “one of Los Angeles’ best rappers out,” but in another run of the simulation, ICECOLDBISHOP is blogging for this very site, filing a 20th-anniversary essay on Ludacris’ Chicken n’ Beer and ranking all of the Sqad Up mixtapes. His lightning-strike charisma lends itself to unspooled, hilarious storytelling that would probably be better for hosting Project Blowed or DJing on KDAY. But his preternatural memory of release dates, timelines and collaboration histories will make even the most austere nerds double-check the AllMusic database. The 29-year-old artist’s love for all things 21st-century hip-hop culture seeps through our 90-minute conversation, so much so that we take multiple breaks to rap old verses and debate the G-Unit hierarchy of emcees. Bishop evidently loves this shit with an almost childlike reverence, and it gets harder to believe this is the same guy who’s been holding his debut album for almost half a decade.
Born in South Central, Bishop explains that he was in his mother’s womb while she was in the streets during the 1992 uprisings. His father died two years later, cruelly hastening the process of maturation for an inward-looking only child. He worshiped hyper-localities like Ice-T and Ice Cube to the point that it inspired his artist name, but was equally drawn to the alien neo-soul of Jill Scott, D’Angelo and Erykah Badu. The early results gave a raw, West Coast documentarian who was wholly unafraid of vocal modulations and pitch swings. He battle rapped in McDonalds parking lots and apartment complexes, staying with relatives and laying his head on a rotation of different cold wood floors. He was never a gangbanger but slipped in and out of trouble nevertheless, to the point where his mother relocated him from L.A. to Victorville in San Bernardino County as a high-school time-split.
The world learned Bishop’s name in 2017 through “Porch,” a cornea-flipping ode to the hood, its beat reeking like crack smoke in the fetid sunshine. A year later came his true breakout, “IRATE,” a squawking bulldozer of a banger that earned a COLORS session and caught the attention of producers Alchemist and Kenny Beats. Epic Records gave him his own imprint, ICE COLD ENTERTAINMENT. But aside from a few song-stealing verses with The Cool Kids, Boldy James, AG Club and Mick Jenkins, respectively, the output has been remarkably hushed.
Bishop’s been writing and scheming his debut project since before the pandemic hit. He was functionally unhoused for much of its creative inception, but swears he didn’t feel compelled to smooth over the uglier parts with label resources or mainstream features, nor retcon the mood given his more comfortable current life. On GENERATIONAL CURSE, he raps as if there’s a lump in his throat and that lump is about to implode. The music is claustrophobic and paranoid, yet exceedingly fun to bump and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. “Candle Light” tightropes from swinging at fed-friendly snitches over the clicking of a tapped phone, to sing-song taunts in the key of “Cutie Pie.”
On “Out the Window,” he fashions Take A Daytrip’s beat into a full-on revenge tour ride-along for a slain cousin; in the single “D.A.R.E.,” he ranges from George Clinton-esque bellows from the unknown realm to a burnt-styrofoam, amphetamine-juiced flow like young RBX on speed. The Kenny Beats-laced “Dickies Suit” hooks with a Zion Williamson reference that truly matches the room-shaking production, and invokes both Suga Free and Polow da Don in the same breathless second verse. Funky yet thrilling, loaded with whispers and modulated voices, GENERATIONAL CURSE is a truly unhinged release in the most flattering sense.
“I don’t feel like my energy has been tainted. I come with open arms in all capacities,” ICECOLDBISOP explains. “I like artists that mold themselves, and know themselves as actual artists. People who are willing to do everything for their music, but at the same time never feel like they’re doing too much.”
(This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.)