You possibly can draw a line from Pi’erre Bourne’s spacey, pixelated beats on Playboi Carti’s self-titled mixtape to numerous manufacturing selections of the final half-decade. To call two: flansie and Skimayne’s synth storm on Yeat’s “Gët Busy” and OK’s bruising bassline on OsamaSon’s “Idiot.” For a pair years within the late 2010s, Pi’erre was probably the most modern producers in hip-hop, concocting pure ear sweet by layering sugary digital melodies and foolish soundbites over locomotive 808s. You possibly can hear loads of Atlanta in his beats, however albums like The Lifetime of Pi’erre 4 sound extra like he’s hotboxing a spaceship within the vein of Wiz Khalifa, Sledgren, and Cardo Bought Wings.
The following star within the lineage of futuristic chill is perhaps Minneapolis producer tdf. A fixture of 2020s blown-out underground rap, he’s absolutely studied Pi’erre’s music like a sacred textual content. His nice new album, CULTURE, is filled with equally dramatic transitions, collagist sound design and hypnotic melodies that appear suspended in time. However tdf transcends Pi’erre’s sound by leaning into the swampiness, cranking up the low finish, and scuffing up the mixes a bit extra. He additionally leans more durable into the ethos of a mixtape, taking part in conductor to a refrain of underground rappers. These songs had been possible stitched collectively over e-mail or Discord and assembled piecemeal, however they’ve the lived-in really feel of a stoned hangout within the basement.
Even with all of the vocalists within the combine, the star of the present right here is tdf, who matches collectively drums, melodies and samples into chugging, noisy dreamscapes. A flip of a Frank Ocean Tumblr basic turns into the gleefully twitchy “Numb” with jssr. On the following track, “Stamped,” tdf cuts up on a keyboard as 1oneam deadpans candy nothings. Just like the artists he’s influenced by, it’s onerous to not point out “vibes” when speaking about this music—zone out and let this tape’s hazy synth clouds wash over you. Key to his beat development are bits of discovered sound, that are typically so sticky and shocking they’re like mini hooks. Like Pi’erre Bourne, he loves animal sounds, lion roars particularly, however he can get even weirder; on “Nonetheless My Patna” with ATL Smook, he punctuates bars with a pattern of Dragonball Z character Goku screaming.
CULTURE may use much more of this cheekiness. I miss the irreverence of his 2023 album BLUEPRINT, the place he spams precise audio snippets of salty haters saying issues like, “N***a put any person named Spoof on his tape; that’s the craziest shit I ever seen, bro.” (Justice for Spoof; he slid on “Bands Gone!”) CULTURE has narration, too, however this time it’s from an aggravating uncle who appears like he was given zero steering on what to speak about.
