California manufacturer klwn cat and New York rapper Sunmundi each and every inhabit the intersection the place the experimental mirrored image of Ka and Military Blue collide with the minimum appeal of Roc Marciano and Preservation. cat cites Military and J Dilla as influences on his taste, however the beats he’s been making since 2022’s sphynx, vol. 1 have matured past homage, changing into liquid and enveloping. In the meantime, Sunmundi’s drift, which began out with a strictly metered supply, has slowly loosened to compare his melancholic prose, incomes shoutouts from billy woods. After a handful of collaborations, they each emerge with power and skill to burn on Lived and Born, their first full-length in combination. Right here, they produce and rap like they’re digging themselves out of shallow graves with their enamel.
Lived and Born flirts with concepts of reincarnation and digs via Sunmundi’s previous, provide, and long term to seize on the tether between them. However even if the ruminations really feel inescapable, he blazes via them with the precision—and triple the urgency—of Lengthy Island rapper-producer Lungs. When, close to the tip of early standout “Capitulation,” he says “Happiness in this day and age simply don’t hit the similar,” the concept is stacked with playground recollections, the therapeutic qualities of brown butter pierogies, and a bottomless urge for food for each and every new bankruptcy of lifestyles. “Overdue-stage capitulation is a motherfuckin’ sonuvabitch!” he says in a single echoing gulp of breath, channeling the time-conscious frenzy of Again to the Long run’s Document Brown. klwn cat’s flutes and comfortable drum rolls trill within the background, giving Sunmundi’s phrases the burden of biblical edicts.
That’s the core of the pair’s chemistry: cat’s mournful loops cut up the adaptation between the gothic horror of Ingmar Bergman and the smoky atmosphere of movie noir, whilst Sunmundi’s bars scurry via them, frantic however made up our minds. Over the rumbling bass and violins of “New Pavement,” he’s piecing in combination head-busting aphorisms (“The one strategy to make sense of this international was once to manufacture it”) whilst suffering to seek out the energy to respire. At the glowing “Answering the Name,” he’s swinging his ft from the spaceship and taking convenience in how a lot he doesn’t know. Sunmundi’s degree of walk in the park on this planet and in himself shifts from tune to tune—at the bittersweet “The whole lot Is The whole lot,” he switches from hopeful to despondent on a dime—however cat’s soundscapes floor him within the provide.
