Image via YUNGMORPHEUS/Instagram
Steven Louis will sign the mid-level exception, according to his agents at PoW Sports.
I trust that our readership knows what Nervous Music is, but in light of some very conspicuous absences on that Forum stage, it’s worth reaffirming. Drakeo the Ruler’s signature sound, named from his 2013 debut mixtape, captured American decay and galvanized the city’s creative output. Skittering drumwork behind sinister, elastic key loops; counterclockwise flows with the exotic and surreal “lingo bingo.”
Nervous Music came from cracking a Wockhardt seal while hitting triple-digits on the 110, smirking and sneering at the jabroni-ass opps while the sirens grow louder. Drakeo’s Cold Devil and 03 Greedo’s Purple Summer are the high watermarks for the sound, and the paranoia was fully substantiated in the years following those releases. Greedo lost five years to the carceral beast out in Texas. Drakeo survived solitary confinement in Men’s Central Jail and the obsession of an overzealous district attorney, only to be set up and assassinated at an LA show in December 2021.
The jealousy was real, the sedation was necessary — Nervous Music has been vindicated and must be kept in circulation. Greedo has repeatedly pledged to celebrate Drakeo’s spirit. His brother and Stinc Team collaborator Ralfy the Plug is now Nervous Music’s notary, and has stealthily become one of the city’s sharpest rappers. Desto Dubb’s enterprising tributes at Awful Lot of Cough Syrup have supported the Caldwell family. These three float as Nervous Music’s new triptych — Greedo puts syrup in his soda in anticipation of a feds sweep, Ralfy ling-ling bops through the money on autopilot, and Desto transforms into the Purple Power Ranger with custom Balenciagas. Sparse and searing, “Nervous Music” is a reminder of what we’ve lost, as well as all that can’t be taken away.
His very specific references to the blade and the set notwithstanding, I don’t get why Jay Worthy isn’t all over our airwaves. The unbothered flow and ear for grooves render him a natural hitmaker, whether paired with Sean House on this year’s spectacular Affiliated 2 or Dām Funk on the brand-new Magic Hour. “Watch Your Tone” isn’t the best cruising song on this latest drop — that would be the intergalactically dope “105 West,” my submission for LA Song of the Summer, Non-Not Like Us Category — but it’s very much the second-best. Dām’s beat claps and bounces over slinking bass and neon synth, while Ray Wright’s hook sticks like honey on velveteen. Worthy pairs the jerk chicken pizza with a glass of sangria, and goes from the Hamptons with Harry Fraud back to the block with the blower in the back seat. “Watch Your Tone” feels like facing a blunt in the lounge before boarding the redeye, or eating truffle butter bluefin in a coupe that’s parked on the beach. The “Brat Summer” thing is cool for some folks, but I’m personally in pursuance of a P Worthy Solstice.
Were it not for the pictorial greatness of Fernando Valenzuela, we would all celebrate Hideo Nomo as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ premiere international sensation with a wild pitching motion. Seriously, it’s so rad that a city with vibrant Mexican and Japanese communities had these two guys in successive generations. Nomo led MLB in strikeouts twice and threw two no-hitters, while also forging a path to the American big leagues for future Japanese megastars like Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani. The way this dude violently contorted his body to hurl out a sputtering forkball remains one of the swaggiest things in the sport’s history, and it’s exactly how Action Bronson delivers on his latest full-length, Johann Sebastian Bachlava The Doctor.
“Bak” winds up for 23 seconds with strained indignance and gruff swears before lobbing out “do bad thing in staircase” with no drum drop. Bronson’s deranged brilliance has become a public commodity at this point, but I find that his best work comes from delirious grievance, rather than random decadence. In other words, it’s less about the dish he’s preparing and the color of wax he’s smoking on, and more about how those things have given him the million-yard stare of a grizzled war vet. “Hideo Nomo” has the hilarious tenderness of “9-24-13,” with our protagonist considering Roman face surgery and threatening anyone with a hand near the cheese board. He’s got a Ring Pop on his trigger finger and a shared mission with Jules Verne. Julian Love’s guitar plays us out to the Seven Seas.
I have seldom few rappers from the past two decades matching Illmac’s pen game. The indigenous Pacific Northwesterner established himself as a prodigious freestyler at the World Rap Championships, and continues to make music that’s heady and bookish without sacrificing cool. “Polarizing” is some of my favorite stuff from him since his tape of Al Green flips — uncoiling ego under late-stage capitalism and reconciling the ways he’s both liberated and limited. Here, you’ll find a Van Cleef pendant in a pile of garbage, and the spiritual dogma of Acharya Rajneesh lingering through Oregon forestry. “Started drinking again, trippin’, too lit to function / thought I was talking on the phone but it’s a brick of hundreds” is a lugubrious flex, and rhyming “Fear and Loathing circus act” with “Cyrano de Bergerac” is nothing short of civic achievement. “Polarizing” is music to pace the attic to, a miniaturist nesting doll of pride and pain.
YUNGMORPHEUS tends to foreground his releases in grays and shadows, a fitting aesthetic for an artist simultaneously confessional and distant. The latest album, Waking Up and Choosing Violence with LA rapper/producer Alexander Spit, continues to project a resentful genius battling for dignity in a collapsing world, noir jazz beats and subdued flows that bleed charcoal. “A Moment’s Reprieve” is exactly that, precisely two minutes of airing out the room with warm flute tones and crinkled acoustics. Morpheus’ flow browns the salmon croquettes and powers the clover-colored Benz. It sounds like putting on a cashmere peacoat and brimmed hat, walking downtown on an overcast day that never rains.
I wonder what’s the best way to describe Lazer Dim 700’s delivery from our solar system’s outermost planet (RIP Pluto, you would’ve loved BabyDrill). He raps like he’s playing Mario Kart, accelerating and decelerating with new items around every turn. He raps like he’s balancing a libra scale, hurriedly stacking the alternating sides of the beat to create a perpetual wobble. He raps like he’s sprinting hurdles while being fed hot chicken. He raps like he forgot what he’s going to say, then instantly remembered just before it’s too late. He raps like a Nickelodeon main character making an elaborate excuse to his doting parents after causing some good-natured chaos. He raps like someone who has been waiting to use the bathroom for, like, 15 minutes. I really don’t know how he raps like this, but I’m pumped that he did it.
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