Yungmorpheus’ music is a research in seeing the statue lurking throughout the slab of marble. For almost a decade, the Miami-raised, Los Angeles-based rapper has been chipping away at a specific sound, smoothing out every beveled edge with each subsequent launch. On its face, his system is fairly easy: well-appointed loops, drums that click on greater than they crack, sharp-witted couplets delivered in a gift however aloof monotone. It’s a heavy-lidded vibe, mildly psychedelic like a morning with out caffeine, shifting slowly however intentionally.
Morph’s cultivation of the last word chill—a trait that feels endemic to his persona, regardless of the circumstances of his life—appears virtually to exist in a state of inertia. He smokes from a bottomless bag of weed, sips from a sommelier’s fantasy draft checklist, and chooses entrees you may’t pronounce from menus you may’t afford. His writing and supply go hand in hand; as an alternative of sitting on the entrance of the beat, Morph’s voice tucks into its nooks till he turns into considered one of its options, one other factor in a lush, swirling soundscape. You may hearken to his unhurried cadence and resonant tenor and be swept away by his body-high sonics, however ultimately, you’ll catch a line that makes your eyes widen and ears perk. An fringe of anger and paranoia lies beneath his laid-back demeanor: Between the fly life-style moments and flicks of his lighter, Morph additionally synthesizes total libraries of Black radical custom and memorizes the place all of the exits are. Typically, the hazy cloud that hovers over his work begins to really feel like a weighted blanket.
On A Spyglass to One’s Face, his latest album and second collaboration with Charlotte producer Soiled Artwork Membership, Yungmorpheus is feeling extra destabilized than regular. He typically switches between factors of view in his raps, giving the sense that it may be simpler to create a personality to research one’s ideas than look internally. Possibly he’s dissociating, possibly it’s unconscious—both means, Morph makes a behavior of stepping exterior of himself. He’s by no means had a lot of a choice for complicating his tune constructions, preferring to unspool his ideas by one lengthy verse and instantly shifting on to the subsequent. That strategy hasn’t modified a lot right here, however he lets the beats journey a bit of greater than regular, permitting his ideas only a smidge extra respiratory room. Soiled Artwork Membership’s manufacturing, as lush and ethereal as something Morph’s rapped on, feels sharper than his typical saturated palette. The flurries of tape static have been scrubbed off, and there’s a readability to the samples, as if Morph is standing in the midst of the spherical, directing a reside band. It’s the perfect distillation of the Yungmorpheus concept, preserving his laconic sound intact however shining gentle on the anxiousness that simmers beneath. All of it makes Morph appear livelier, extra outwardly weak and approachable.
