In the previous few years, RealYungPhil’s raps have taken on the impact of that good friend who all the time has a life-affirming dialog with you on the porch outdoors of a home social gathering. I’m speaking the type of heart-to-heart the place you solely hear light murmurs of the music coming from inside each time the door swings open, and once you return into the crib, in some way a lot time has handed that almost everyone seems to be gone. This informal pensiveness has been a part of Phil’s deadpan punchline rap since no less than the early 2020s, once I solely knew him because the Connecticut-raised graduate of the litefeet scene with arguably the coolest beat choice within the underground. Ever because the tapped-in Swedish beatmakers—Yung Sherman, Woesum, Gud—within the Unhappy Boys and Drain Gang orbit began hooking him up with their glassy, near-liturgical instrumentals round 2023’s Victory Music, it’s been pushed to the forefront.
I like Victory Music however not as a lot as I just like the thought of Victory Music. The tape has a celestial glow however it may be one-note, with Phil including his meditative ideas and stray flexes to what seems like a beatpack despatched over e-mail. It’s extra just like the type of cross-Atlantic link-up a fan would dream up in the event that they designed a fantasy rap album (I do know I did) than what you’d get if Phil and the Swedish boys have been truly feeding off one another. Fortuitously, that’s not the case together with his new document, till one thing modifications, which feels much more collaborative and intentional. Phil steps into their lush world of mystic atmosphere and in response, they up the tempos a tick to fulfill his steely East Coast bravado. It is smart that the album wasn’t solely laid down in Connecticut and Los Angeles, but additionally in Stockholm.
No rating but, be the primary so as to add.
The true-life chemistry is current on “activated”—produced by the trio of Woesum, Stacey, and Eurohead—which kicks off with the type of celebratory church bells you may hear on a marriage day, supercharged by the crashing 808s I are inclined to affiliate with the offshoot of drill in style within the Northeast. That little little bit of pop provides Phil a pocket to catch as he strings collectively his resolute phrases of motivation: “It ain’t shit that I acquire from you dropping/And it’s nothing I lose from you successful.” In one other life, he’d be writing uplifting Nike slogans. I initially thought “Distant”—which is, hilariously, Adam Sandler’s Click on in music kind—was overly glacial, till Gud’s sporadic bursts of ticking hi-hats hit like a downpour in the course of a heatwave. That slight bounce underlines Phil’s optimistic breakthrough. Woesum and Stacey deliver a much bigger punch to that serene temper on “Bought Out Reveals,” the place the drums gently rumble like a toy practice set. Phil exhibits out on that beat, too, dusting his verses—in between forgettable raps by UK newcomers Kare and kwes e—with brief, recognizable messages (“Sorry I couldn’t get again to you, I had shit I used to be going via”) that don’t require him to go any deeper.
