There are many ways of loving hip-hop, but there's one in particular that most fans go through at some point that involves thinking really hard. Listen the right way, and the music turns into this fantastic puzzle, or maybe an equation that works out just so: Hook the beat up, convert it into hip-hop form, write a rhyme, etc. There's a specific kind of hip-hop that tends to fit this mindset best, in which the lyrics are geared in equal parts toward head and record scratching, the beats put you in a zone, and the only possible reaction is turn to your (perhaps equally stoned) friend and say "that's dope."
That style is one that the Los Angeles-based label Stones Throw excels in, and MC/producer Jonwayne is more or less the label's archetypal practitioner. Coming from an electronic background inspired by hanging out as a teenager in L.A.'s beat underground during the rise of artists like Flying Lotus and the Gaslamp Killer, Jonwayne has spent the last couple years staking out a claim as an MC with his series of Cassette mixtapes. His vibe is that of the friendly slacker dude who seems to always be hanging around in high school parking lots or dorm common rooms, eager to talk your ear off about some obscure psychedelia band or Wu-Tang deep cuts. With his proper debut, Rap Album One, he's upfront about what he's offering, cutting a Silent Bob or Dude-like figure in press photos and using a picture of a saltine cracker (wink, wink) as his album cover.
Pretty much everything about Jonwayne's approach to rap can be summed up in his lines from "You Can Love Me When I'm Dead", in which he explains, "this is rap shit, recite banter with high standards/ cold-blooded art like a salamander on fine canvas." His lyrics are clever and exactingly written, full of dense internal rhymes, and carefully thought-out punchlines. Although he offers some biography, particularly on "The Come Up Pt. 1 and Pt. 2", mostly he sticks to lyrical-bread-and-butter stuff that can't really be begrudged.
But while Wayne may be a rapper who seems primarily interested in technique, he's not a very technically interesting rapper. Almost all of his verses are delivered in a monotone, and he rarely varies his flow to sound any way other than steady and studiously composed. He raps slowly and deliberately, often taking a pause between bars, in a way that makes lines land like stoner proclamations or Deep Thoughts. Lyrics like "Shoes in the closet/ My stomach's got too many knots to justify tying laces and looking sharp" seem profound but end up revealing themselves as aimless upon closer inspection. On the song "Yung Grammar", the sort-of funny idea of screwing down a hook about grammar skills is immediately undermined by the revelation that there's basically nothing that sounds more boring screwed than a list of the parts of speech.
Elsewhere, though, it's these types of experiments that yield the album's best results. Much of "You Can Love Me When I'm Dead" is simply a piano riff that leans heavily on the instrument's rarely used low end and a drum machine with the phrase "every time I grab the mic I rock it just like that" being scratched in different ways. It sounds cool, and it's easy to zone out to, a trip to the traditionalist rap fan's subconscious. On "Zeroh's Song", by far the album's best and most interesting cut, rapping is more or less abandoned as snatches of sung phrases flit in and out of the track. Wayne blurts out the screwed-down phrase "they went back to moon!", and counts in a sinister voice over meandering synthesizer plinks. It's totally weird and fun, connecting the dots between Animal Collective, DJ Screw and Chance the Rapper, the moment when the album feels the least deliberate and the most playful.
The upside to Wayne's exacting approach throughout is that the production sounds fantastic, a clear indication of where his roots lie as an artist. His sound is minimal, in many cases relying on just piano and subdued drum pattern—live he uses just a sampler and a mic—which works to vivid effect. "Sandals", for instance, relies almost entirely on hi-hats, a perfectly calm match for Wayne's low-key style. While the rapping on Rap Album One can feel bogged down in thought, the production benefits from the almost mathematical approach (things get literally mathematical on the vinyl version, which, at 45 RPM, is designed to sound screwed down when played at a normal 33 ⅓ RPM). The album may be hard to connect to on anything other than a cerebral level, but sometimes that's the best way to connect.
