Tennessee-born, L.A.-based rapper Samara Cyn is feeling under the weather while she’s in Rolling Stone’s New York offices. The 26-year-old has been handling obligations for her now-released debut album, The Drive Home, and between performances, interviews, and the seasonal changes, her vocal cords are “burned out.”
“It’s been a crazy past couple weeks. I tried to get it together before, but with the weather and everything, it just wasn’t going to go,” she laments. “I’ve been talking way too much. I lose my voice every October.” Her vocals are so strained that she’s not sure how much she’ll be singing at a La Pere performance later that night. But luckily for the attendees, she’s got plenty of bars in the tuck.
Her sonic versatility is on display throughout her debut project, where crooning and reflective 16s cross-sect at her whim. The album was preceded by a freestyle series that went viral, attracting attention from big names such as Doja Cat and Alicia Keys. But the clips also garnered Samara her first major dose of criticism, which she explores on “Sinner,” where she reflects, “Used to work at Harbor Freight, but now this my office/Can you believe they pay me all this money just to talk shit?”
The Drive Home has been a diaristic project since the nomadic artist, who grew up in a military family, began working on it three years ago in L.A. Her winding life path inculcated her with adaptability and open-mindedness, but constantly changing environments resulted in a questionable sense of self-identity. While figuring out what self-discovery looked like to her, she started making music in college, which was a more creatively liberating path than the spoken word she previously explored.
She says she’s recorded around 150 songs for The Drive Home and has crafted about six different iterations of the album over time. Upon moving to L.A., she caught a creative groove that fits the project’s predominant theme of self-exploration and acceptance. Those themes are at play on songs like “I Might Die” and “Rolling Stone.” Samara talked to Rolling Stone about The Drive Home, her journey to this point, and her Third Eye Lazy brand.
What was it like growing up in Tennessee?
So I was born in Tennessee, but my dad joined the military the same year I was born. So I didn’t grow up in Tennessee. We stayed there for a few years as I was a kid, but my whole family is from Tennessee. I was there for the first few years of my life. And then we went to Georgia, we went to Texas, we went to Hawaii, went to Colorado, and then I ended up leaving from Colorado to Arizona to go to college. So a lot of different places is where I was raised; I can’t claim one spot.
I do feel like I grew up in a very southern household. My mom, her accent’s still very strong. We had the food … it was very southern based, the code that you learn from your parents and stuff, that was very deep-rooted. But I had a lot of influence from all the different places that I grew up. Black culture, predominantly Hispanic culture. When we went to Hawaii, it was predominantly Asian and island culture. Colorado was white as hell. It was just all different types of cultures and communities, and I got to get a few years of glimpses into each of them.
Did you have a favorite place among all those places you moved?
Probably Hawaii. I feel like that was the first time that I felt like I was making deep-rooted relationships and friendships and we got to stay there. That was the first time we got to live anywhere for four years. Everywhere else, it was like two and a half years.
How do you think being constantly reacquainted with new people affected your personality?
I think it made me a lot more open-minded. I think it helped my delivery because it put me around all different types of people. My dad being in the military too, you have to meet a lot of his coworkers and things like that. That’s all sort of fraternities. I was around all different types of people, old, young, Black, white, Asian, Hispanic. And I feel like it made me realize that every individual person has a unique communication style.
I think that translates well into how I communicate with people. I think it translates well into how I communicate through my music as well. So it gave me a lot of really dope experiences. I think the more difficult side was identity growing up. People have to have a really stable environment. They’re affected by that environment, and that environment helps raise them. Although there was structure in my household and there was stableness in my household, thank God, my parents were really great, it was like the environment was always changing. So I think identity was hard.
Because as a kid, you recognize that you’re different, but you don’t understand it. You go into all these different places. So when I think about my childhood, I don’t think like, damn, I just felt so different, so excluded or anything like that. But I do feel like I got really good at learning to play by myself and self-soothe. I think I got really good at assimilating as a survival mechanism. When I got into my 20s and I was able to be stable at that point, it was like, damn, I feel like I’m starting this journey of self-identity so late. Now, I’m out of my household, I’m able to explore things. I don’t know what my style is. I don’t know who I want to be around. I don’t know all of these different things that I felt at the time, I felt like everybody else knew, which is not the case.
But yeah, I do admire people though that are like, “Yeah, I’m from Brooklyn. I’m born and raised in Brooklyn.” And you could hear it in their accent, you can see it in their clothes. And I’m from L.A., all these different places that I’ve been traveling to now as an adult. And it’s like people can’t understand the fact that, yeah, I’m from Tennessee, but I wasn’t raised there.
What did self-discovery look like for you?
Trying new things was never a problem for me, but figuring out how to negotiate with my own anxiety and my own fears and stuff [was]. I felt like I cared a lot about how people perceived me. I think I was hypervigilant of it because of the identity thing that I knew was going on internally. I played sports and I danced and I did all of these things. I wrote poetry. But it wasn’t until I started making music that I was like, “This feels so free. This feels the most authentic in moments where I can stop thinking about everything else.”
Because I’m very much so an over-thinker. So the only time I was able to find those moments of just freedom was making music or writing music, I could spend hours listening to beats and writing songs, and I didn’t feel judgment of myself or of my surroundings or the situation. I feel like we’re always talking to ourselves, observing the situation and assessing the situation. And with music, I feel free of that. I don’t need a substance. I don’t need to smoke weed. I don’t need to drink alcohol. I could literally just be fully invested in music and I can let all of it go.
I pushed through feeling anxious or scared of doing it, performing, which I still get anxious about performing, recording in a room that has other people in it. I was just able to navigate those situations and negotiate the fear that comes with those situations until I felt validated enough and confident enough to be in those and felt like I belonged there.
How do you feel about external perception now?
I’m 26 now, so my frontal lobe is fully developed, which is a flex [Laughs]. This past year, things have been clicking a lot faster for me. And it’s not that I don’t care because I don’t think I’ll ever not care, but I think I’m more aware of the fact that my thoughts are not facts, you know what I’m saying? So if I see something that is like, damn, OK, I’m putting this out on a mass scale, a lot of people are seeing it. My intention is for it to be as authentic as possible, and I intended to give this message and not everybody’s going to get that message. And not everything is for everybody. And also too, I think a lot of things that people say are also thoughts that are not fact.
So in a state where I may be judging myself, I know not to hang on. It’s in my control, what I hang on to and what I let go of. I feel like now I can let go of a lot of the perception things. I still get anxious, but I think I can treat being anxious more like a feeling like anger and sadness and happiness. We all fricking go through the same seven emotions. So even though our experiences are unique, we all can connect on feeling a certain type of way, but every feeling is going to pass eventually.
It’s funny that this project is about authenticity. It’s about my journey to self acceptance. Because as I was making it, I felt like I was actively going through it. And at the end, it made sense that the project ended up where it was based on where I was at in my life. But as a creator, for me, there’s a constant battle of, is this authentic? Obviously, you pull influences from your experiences and you pull influences from music and fashion and all these different things, but is this coming out untainted by what I think people might say about it? So there’s a constant, “Make sure whatever’s coming out is as natural as possible.”
Can you tell me about first delving into poetry and how that turned into doing poetry slams?
My mom’s an English teacher. So, every year, she would teach a poetry lesson and she would show Brave New Voices. I remember watching the video that she had put on in her classes and being like, this is so cool. I started writing poetry when I was in the fifth grade. And it wasn’t deep. It wasn’t a passion of mine. It was just something I would do when I was bored. And like I said, I was really good growing up at playing with myself and not needing a lot of friends.
And then when I got to college, it started being more of a thing. I lived by myself. It was something that I would do when I was bored. I found an event called Poetic Soul, which was an open-mic event. And every Wednesday, you would go and you slide up on the list. And I went a few times just to catch a vibe and see what was going on. And then eventually, I started performing there every other week. And that threw me even further into the music part of it because they had a band. Music artists would come out. It was poetry people; it was all different types of stuff. So I feel like my poetry slam era was very short because it wasn’t long after that that I was making music.
And I liked that a lot more than just writing poetry. Yeah. But it taught me cadence, it taught me flow, it taught me how to get up in front of people. It taught me rhyme schemes. Poetry is like a puzzle. Rap is like a puzzle. It’s like, how do I deliver what I’m trying to say in a way that fits a rhyme scheme and is clever? Rap uses so many literary devices. I think people are unaware that they’re hearing is alliteration and personification … all these different things that makes rap interesting.
What was it that made you want to start making music?
I was hanging out with some friends, and we were playing beats. And one of the friends that I was hanging out with was a rapper, and he rapped something over the beats that we were playing. And I was like, yeah, I have a poem in my notes that would go to this. And so I rapped it over the beat, and my friends were like, “Damn, Cyn, that was actually pretty good.” After that, I couldn’t stop writing. I wanted to write songs because I felt like I could. I got in the studio pretty quickly. I think I found it at the right time because I needed something to keep myself occupied, and sane. And it ended up being something that was very therapeutic. Shortly after that, Covid hit. So again, I’m in the house by myself all the time. I’m not seeing anybody, I’m not talking to anybody. And I needed to do it to get out the feelings that I was feeling.
How long you think it took you to find your voice?
Well, I moved to L.A. in 2022. I started making music in 2019, probably like three or four years.
What is the song or the project that you feel like exemplifies, “All right, I got it. This is me.”
“Chrome.” I wish that it was the focus track of the EP because it embodies the message so well. And I feel like it showcases all of the different things: the singing aspect, the structuring of the song, the rap. It’s me talking about the extent to which I play the game. How much of myself do I want to give to this, and how much do I need to stand on business about, this is what I am and this is what I want to do? “Chrome” was my first session with D’Mile. I was pretty nervous for that session because he’s a great producer. He was the biggest producer I had worked with up until that point. And yeah, writing it in the room, I felt confident. And normally, those big sessions, they psych you out a little bit. Being in with D’Mile and us linking up for the first time and creating such a dope song that was so true to what the project is about felt really good.
You’ve said the album is about self-acceptance. How does the title play into that, and how did you come to that title?
When you think about a journey, getting from point A to point B, one of those ways you can get there is with a car. And home [is about] where you land, identity and self and acceptance, it feels like you came home, feels like peace. On the flip side of that, I make very chill music that you listen to at the end of the day on your drive home. And my friend, Nov, who I started the project with a long time ago, it was his idea because he knew that I moved around a lot. It’s so funny because that was almost three years ago now, and since then, I’ve recycled the project 50 times. It was what needed to happen because I really needed to find my voice and be crystal clear about it. And I feel like that came with more time.
How would you describe your sound to listeners?
I would say most of it is alternative hip-hop with a neo-soul foundation. When people ask me what type of music I make, I say neo, soul, hip-hop, fusion.
What do you think of musical genres in general?
I have nothing against genre, but I am really happy that genre-bending is more of a thing now. I feel like we need genres. And if you think about it, a lot of genres are new. Hip-hop is only 50-something years old. R&B is not super-duper old. I think as people who categorize everything, gender and restaurants, everything is categorized from that broad spectrum of gender all the way to restaurants, we need it for familiarity and to make things make sense in our brain.
But I do think that sometimes it can be limiting. Whatever comes out naturally to you, whatever that sounds like is your genre. It doesn’t have to be one thing. We don’t have to be one thing as people. I really admire the whole blending of genres. A lot of my favorite artists have pushed the confines of creativity and pushed the confines of their genre. So yeah, I think one day, everybody’s going to be just really unique if we can let go of that.
Would you say from day one, when you started making music, you were both singing and rapping?
I was rapping. It was a derivative of the poetry, or it was the same thing, really. I was rapping. I wasn’t a very good singer at all, actually. And as I kept getting in the studio, I got a little bit better. But even now, I wouldn’t full-blown just say that [I’m] a singer. I think I can sing well and I have a cool tone, but when I think of singers, I’m like, Jasmine Sullivan, or you know what I mean? It’s like oh, sure, these people that could do really crazy things with their voice.
But yeah, singing came over time, and it was really out of the fact that I was making music by myself a lot, and I knew that there was a difference between writing a good rap and making a really good song. And I know that the really good songs need musicality and all these different things. I didn’t have somebody that I could pay to bring in and sing the hook to my song. So I sang the hook to my song and didn’t have anybody to do this. Or if I heard a cadence, then it was like, OK, I’ll do that.
When you’re feeling certain emotions, how do you choose when you want to sing versus rap?
Yeah, I think it’s just natural. My writing process changes all the time. Sometimes, you get a message or you’re learning a lesson or it’s a theme of that week, and so you start writing about it. Sometimes you go into the studio, y’all hook it up, you hear a beat and the melody comes to you. It’s pure feeling, It’s a dance with production and song structure for sure. But I think initially, it’s the feeling that’s like, I hear it. I don’t like listening to beats for too long before we start recording, play 20 seconds of it, load that one up, let’s do that one. I did not want to hear it over and over again because I will lose my initial feeling of what I would’ve done if I heard it for the first time. It’s not rehearsed. It’s not me trying to do what I did the first time. It’s just what comes out naturally. I feel like that’s the best time that you get the best melodies, you get the best canvases.
You’ve always been like that with beats?
No, I had to learn my lesson. I would write all my songs and I would practice them in my house, and then I would take those songs to the studio because I knew I could only afford this many hours in the studio. So it was like, all right, I got to get these out the right way in this amount of time, or I’m not going to have these songs done. But it’s like, these are coming out really rehearsed. It sounds like I’m reading. Delivery is everything in music.
How did “Center” come together?
I was in Orlando at the time, and I was feeling really confident. That was post-freestyles. [Originally] we were going to drop all of these singles. At the end of last year, I had not a lot of people listening to my music or paying attention to what I was doing at all. And so we were like, this is how we’re going to drop these singles, we’re going to see if we can create a community. And once we create that community of supporters and fans then we’re going to give them a project or an EP.
And then as we were waiting for us to be able to drop that first single, it was like, wow, I want to put something out so bad. And so we had had the talk about freestyles on social media. I was like, all right, cool. Very simple, very fun process. And those freestyles ended up doing what the singles were supposed to do. So they went up super crazy. And I felt like, even on top of everybody telling me, “Oh, you should do the content this way. TikTok’s not going to mess with that because it’s too produced.” Everybody was so sure that it had to be one way. And I was like, no, it doesn’t. Watch this. Let’s throw this at them and let’s do this.I don’t think we anticipated it doing as well as it did. But I do feel like we were pretty confident with the content that we had.
“Center” was right off of that. I’m over here feeling hella good about everything, but it was also the first time that any of my shit went viral. It was my first time experiencing negativity and people had something negative to say about what I was doing. And I was like, “Oh, my ego, ooh, this doesn’t feel that good.” It was my first lesson with how to let that shit pass and not take anything and hold onto it. And when we were in Orlando, I was just in one of those moods and Power Tribe had sent over this pack. We’re listening through it, and it just felt cinematic. It felt like a movie. I was like, I’m just going to talk so much shit on this record. Sometimes you have to tell yourself and big up yourself to be like, “Fuck y’all.” I don’t care what y’all are saying about it.
I wrote it right there in the studio and we recorded it, and it ended up being one of our favorite records on the project. It was actually really funny. We were walking around Disney. I haven’t told anybody this story for real, but yeah, we were walking around Disney, and they have different parks and stuff. And there was one in particular where it had different cultures. There’s Sweden and Tokyo and all of these different places that you could walk through. And we were coming up on a candy store and it was spelled caramel, and then K-U-C-H-E, and had a bunch of accent marks on it.
So I was like, does that say “Caramel Kuche?’ What does that say?” We just thought that was so funny. So we’re in the studio and there’s a line in the song where I’m like, “They like my little voice., they think that my shit sweet, they think they going eat this little caramel kuche.” And literally, for the sake of the joke, I committed a whole bar. I literally just wanted to make everybody in the studio laugh real quick because it was such a funny moment. We were crying at the fact that the building at Disney World where kids are running around was called Caramel Kuche.
Can you take me into “I Might Die?”
I made that one in a low moment. I think I chose the shittiest career path I could have chosen because it’s so risky and it’s not stable, and it’s very correlated to your actual life. You’re very vulnerable. Everybody can see their life. Everybody can comment on the things that you are creating. So I feel like you’re always in a vulnerable position to have somebody say some shit to you.But there’s also the vulnerability of being broke as hell for a long time and not feeling confident all the time that you’re going to make it to the end of the journey.
And so, “I Might Die” was in a moment where I was like, what if this doesn’t go? What if it doesn’t go the way that I’m planning it? Or what if all this work that I put in and how fulfilled I feel doing this, what if I never live up to the potential that I feel like I have? So “I Might Die,” I guess, was just like, it wasn’t literally, I might die, but in every journey it’s like, damn, I might not make it.
I had to be in the studio by myself that day. I kicked everybody out. My managers were just on the outside of the door like all right, I guess we’ll play pool or something. And I sang. That was the first time that singing had really come out of me that way.
There was literally no plug-ins on the damn computer. And one of my favorite albums of all time is Back to Basics disc two, specifically by Christina Aguilera. And she has a song on there called “Trouble.” And the way they engineered it was that it sounded like she was coming through an old radio. And it sounded so cool and there were no plug-ins. And I was like, “This needs something,” because like I said, I’m not singing like Adele. I found the telephone effect on the computer that literally had not one plug-in on it. And I put a stop plug-in on there, and it ended up sounding really cool. And then John Kersey, who mixed the project, was able to have the backgrounds be present and in your ear, but have the main vocals still sound pretty old. He did a beautiful job of making that song feel like an experience.
How did you feel after writing and recording it?
Proud. I think that’s why I like music. You could feel really [defeated] going into it. But when you’re able to take a feeling and communicate it and get it out and off your chest, it’s relief. And then you’re proud that you made something productive out of it. Now, I have something tangible that I have to show for this moment, and I feel proud of this thing that I have.
So, of course, I had to ask you about “Rolling Stone.”
“Rolling Stone” never got finished. There was only one verse on it, and then the hook is just long as hell. But that ending part, it is not a long ending. There’s nothing there. It was supposed to be a second verse. It never got finished. That was a rough day in the studio for me. We kept loading up beats, and I kept trying to make something, and it was all coming out super shitty and the room was filled with people. And that’s an ego hit when you feel like you’re a good artist and there’s a bunch of people in the room and you can’t make something good. I was feeling a bit defeated and we had went through three different songs and I was just like, “I’m about to go home, bro. It’s just not happening for me today.”
And then my friend Whit loaded up the beat for “Rolling Stone.” I was not happy to do it, low-key because I really just wanted to go home. I was like, fuck it, let’s get something out. Let’s do it just so I don’t feel completely like a failure. And we made “Rolling Stone” and later on, it ended up being another one of my favorites on the project. It’s the focus track for the EP, and it never got finished. I’m in there talking about, “I’m not insecure!” Bitch, I was so insecure in that moment. “I’m the biggest in the world, bitch.” But I guess that’s the whole joke of it.
How often does that happen where things accidentally become like, all right, let’s just go with that?
Maybe a third of the time. I feel like I’m pretty intentional. But sometimes, you’re so intentional that you overthink things, and it doesn’t need to be that deep. So it’s like, oh, actually, this sounds really good. Let’s just go with this. Why are we trying to make it more difficult than it needs to be?
Can you take me to the vision for your Third Eye Lazy brand?
Third Eye Lazy started because I didn’t want to put my face on a T-shirt because I felt like that was wack as fuck. And I just felt like faces on a T-shirt are for other people to do when they want your face on a T-shirt. It’s not for you to be like, let me throw my face on this T-shirt and my name on it. I wanted to do something cool and tasteful and something that I would actually wear.
And Third Eye Lazy was my idea of, OK, who are my favorite artists that do stuff like this? Tyler, the Creator had GOLF WANG. Travis Scott has Cactus Jack. There’s all these different people that created really dope brands that were fashionable. And when I see Cactus Jack, I think of Travis Scott, but I didn’t have to see Travis Scott’s name or face in order to do that. And I would actually wear the clothes, you know what I’m saying? So Third Eye Lazy was, I took some time to really think about what encompasses the world that I’m trying to create and my message. I started drawing a bunch of logos and thinking of different things. And I wrote a song that one of the lines was like, “My third eye is getting lazier.” And the idea was that, I have the knowledge of what I’m supposed to do to be the best version of myself, but I don’t yet have the discipline to do those things.
I know that when my freaking alarm goes off, I should wake up and I should get up. But I don’t have the discipline to not snooze it. In every aspect, I know I should be working out. I know I should be doing this. I know I should be more spiritual and I should do all these things, but the human in me is like, “Not right now.” And maybe one day I’ll be the most disciplined person on the planet, but right now, I’m just like, “Ugh.” So that was Third Eye Lazy. I want it to be music that connects with people, sentiments that are real and clothes that are cool.
How much would you like to see the brand expand and evolve?
I could really see it becoming a production company. I’m really into the creative direction side of things, visuals and writing and things like that.
Here are three more great new albums you should check out
Ankhlejohn
SINEMATIC STUDIOS*
Ankhlejohn, Pride of a Man
Live from “Capitol Hill next to the congressman” comes Ankhlejohn, a grizzled underground presence with an intense delivery and sharp bars that pepper his Pride of a Man project. He’s been rapping for over a decade, telling Half Moon last year that his sound is akin to “a New York sound, but I’m giving you a D.C. experience.” That’s the exact vibe on his 17-song offering, which meshes Ahnklejohn’s boasts, storytelling, and street knowledge, at times dropped alongside fellow beloved lyricists.
The first thing a listener notices about Ankhlejohn is his delivery. His high vocal tone and ferocious mic approach feel akin to a pit bull charging against the last strands of a torn leash, ready to bite down on whoever’s in the vicinity. And his colorful ad-libs add to the hysteria, creating a distinct mic presence. It’s as if he raps with the attitude and vocal presence of two MCs at once.
His fire serves a dual effect throughout the album. It’s an intriguing juxtaposition when he’s rhyming over warm soul samples on “Cadillac Problems,” “Porsches in Ghana,” or “Adams Morgan” with (a sharp) Willie the Kid. But it’s gasoline on the fire of the searing horns on “Ronnie” or the borderline-chaotic vocal sample on “Pride or Ego.” Regardless of tone, Ankhlejohn has a knack for miminalist beats that lets his bars take center stage. There aren’t a bunch of drum rolls, fills, and beat switches here, which allow every word.
And he takes advantage of every couplet. Sometimes it’s social commentary, like when he rhymes, “I’m from the city of the dog food with fentanyl problems/Its something about honor, standup men never nod,” on “Reigny Dayz” with Inspectah Deck. And other times he gets vulnerable, rhyming, “I used to come inside your house and get the feel of a family/Now I’m given out gems that rap nerds wanna slander,” on “Cadillac Problems.” And he gets surrealist on “Nine Taurus,” where he rhymes, “the pillow I sleep on sweated out, you cant even dream on it.”
The quotables are plenty on The Pride of a Man, and they’re dished out over an impressive soundscape.
El Cousteau
Tyra Mitchell*
El Cousteau, Merci, Non Merci
A couple of weeks ago, a clip of El Cousteau’s “Words2LiveBy” track went viral for erroneously framing Earl’s guest verse as a new flourish when he’s rapped on uptempo, synth-driven beats throughout his career. Last year he was on Niontay’s “Real Hip-Hop” with MIKE. And also on both songs were El Cousteau, a D.C. rapper that everyone who enjoys both songs should get familiar with. “Words2LiveBy” is a single from El Cousteau’s latest album, Merci, Non Merci. The album is 17 tracks but just 35 minutes. There’s a premium placed on world-building with albums; Cousteau’s project doesn’t feel like you’re going down one cohesive road, it’s more so a too-close-to-the-ground helicopter ride through an expanse promising a range of experiences, from the smooth and reflective to noxiously chaotic.
One of the hip-hop artist’s greatest weapons in immersion is well-employed randomness. The more an artist intrigues you from line to line, the more locked in you are for the next one. At the project’s most intriguing moments, Cousteau’s lyrics feel like they’re strung together from a whirlwind of memories, boasts, laments, and occasional demands like “your mind should’ve been where you intentions was” from “New Red” over a variant soundbite.
On “Satisfied Satisfaction,” he’s reflective about the doldrums dishonest romance over a smooth beat. On “Ballad of France,” he laments missing his grandmother’s funeral and ponders his career pursuit. But then on “Temper Tantrum” he’s having a free-for-all, letting us know “all of my intrusive thoughts live up front so nigga I ain’t got no cut cards.” Some artists hang their hat on a singular niche of flexing, or dropping knowledge, or telling stories; El Cousteau does it all as he sees fit.
There are traces of the famed DMV flow throughout the project, but Cousteau uses his voice to emphasize certain words and provide a distinctly slippery take on the sound. His vocal tone can’t be pinned down either. On “New Red” he’s screaming, “if I don’t get signed a nigga get robbed,” but he’s more easygoing on “British Liason,” where his end rhyme dissolves into the smooth twelveAM production like an audial fade away. The 25-year-old MC’s future is bright, however he chooses to approach it.
Premo Rice
Shaughn Cooper*
Premo Rice, P Got Game
PG County’s Premo Rice has been steadily building a name with a catalog of luxuriant player themes over terrycloth smooth beats. There are some artists whose early music points to an entirely different persona before they found their artistic comfort zone — not Premo. From 2015’s Mack Sagas, his music has been focused on a bankroll and everything that comes with it. On tracks like “DEEP in my Bag” and “Coast to Coast” with Larry June, he’s true to the lineage of game spitters before him like Too Short and Pimp C. And he’s put it together with an ear for beats that fits firmly in a playlist of similarly laid-back, prolific artists such as Currensy, Larry June.
Premo excels at saying things you probably can’t say over beats you probably can’t forget. If you’re able to get over the barrier of listening to unrepentant pimp eulogizing with bars like “I got three phones bitch, I don’t need you” (admittedly a big ask for some), then Premo is for you. That’s the vibe the self-proclaimed “Black Tony Hawk” offers on his latest offering P Got Game with Harry Fraud.
The eight-track project is extended enough to feel like a healthy offering without being redundant. And Harry Fraud is a perfect producer for Rice to link with — both of them know what to do with a soul sample. The horns on “Grip” roll out in lockstep with Rice’s deliberate flow. Throughout the album, the BPM is slow enough for Rice’s PG drawl to creep out of his inflections, giving him a distinct voice in the landscape. The combination is perfect to listen to on the kind of cruising Rice depicts throughout the project.
On “Jill Scott,” he lets us know, “I treat a hoe like Jill Scott, take a long walk” while his sonic predecessors Currensy and Wiz Khalifa go crazy over a bed of glorious vocal chops. He does the same on the funky “South Beach Finest,” where he pays homage to the motherland of the P by featuring Oakland rapper Kamaiyah alongside Jay Worthy, rhyming, “I’m built like Jesus, I’m built like stone, so baby I can’t keep you.” He’s also built like an MC with a long future in the game.
No Filler is an indie-rap column by Andre Gee running monthly on RollingStone.com. You can check out the No Filler playlist right here.
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