The concept Heems will have to wish to end up his rap credentials to someone is absurd. As one 3rd of late-aughts/early-2010s alt-rap deconstructionists Das Racist, the Queens-born, Punjabi-American rapper helped redefine hip-hop for the web generation, combining incisive, hyper-literate statement on race, rap, and identification politics with irreverent jokes about smoking weed and George Costanza’s penis. After the crowd’s dissolution in 2012, he confirmed he may be honest and emotionally prone, documenting the trauma of the post-9/11 years on 2015 solo album Devour Pray Thug. His closing full-length—Swet Store Boys’ 2016 album Cashmere—used to be a landmark of code-switching diaspora rap that bridged the space between Queens, Hackney, and Delhi’s Chandni Chowk.
However all over his profession, Heems has struggled with the labels—joke-rapper, hipster, the Indian man—which were pressured onto him, fuelling the belief that this working-class Queens local who grew up on Nas and the Misplaced Boyz used to be one way or the other an intruder to hip-hop. “The worst rapper in this observe, 3rd coolest,” he rapped on Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire’s “The Remaining Huzzah (Remix),” a sardonic riposte to haters that however hinted at a bit of lack of confidence. At the Lapgan-produced LAFANDAR, his first unlock in six years, a re-energized Heems units out to in any case put the ones doubts at relaxation. “I in point of fact sought after to make an actual rappy-rap album,” he stated in a contemporary interview. “So I may just as soon as and for all end the ‘can he rap?’ dialog.”
On that entrance, LAFANDAR delivers. That is the sharpest Heems has sounded in a minute, shelling out tongue-twisting quotables in rhyme after rhyme, all delivered along with his signature nonchalant swagger. There’s a focal point to his writing right here that has eluded him on previous solo outings. The entire wonderful messiness and anything-can-happen eclecticism of Das Racist and his early solo paintings on Nehru Jackets and Wild Water Kingdom continues to be provide, however there’s treasured little of the erratic non-sequiturs and self-indulgent irony that slowed down portions of Devour Pray Thug (he’s now not repeating the phrase “readability” like a damaged file and passing it off as a bar anymore).
“My dough nuts, ich bin ein Berliner,” he raps on “I’m Beautiful Cool,” referencing Kennedy’s vintage anti-Communist speech (and a vintage German jelly donut) in provider of a gleefully juvenile wisecrack that’s vintage Das Racist. On “Kala Tika,” he’s taking the very Indian trait of blending up our “v”s and “w”s and runs with it, easily switching syllables to hilarious—and hypnotic—impact. There’s a sinister timbre to his voice at the coke-rap-adjacent South Asian posse lower “Going For six (feat. Sonnyjim and Abhi the Nomad)” that oozes cartoonish threat, a model of Heems you wouldn’t wish to run into on a gloomy boulevard. The file’s various collaborators—starting from Sir Michael Rocks and Cool Calm Pete to Saul Williams and Fatboi Sharif—all carry their A-game, and Heems is at his maximum creative when buying and selling bars along with his fellow emcees. His chemistry with Your Previous Droog is palpable on “Sri Lanka,” the place he performs the wise-cracking smart-alec to Droog’s broody boom-bap drawl. Somewhere else, on “Obi Toppin,” he sounds extremely joyful at sharing a observe with an early idol. “Yo take a look at me out I were given a music with Kool Keith,” he pronounces over a mangled soul pattern, and you’ll be able to’t lend a hand however smile at this charmingly guileless humblebrag.
