Yungmorpheus’ music is a study in seeing the statue lurking within the slab of marble. For nearly a decade, the Miami-raised, Los Angeles-based rapper has been chipping away at a particular sound, smoothing out each beveled edge with every subsequent release. On its face, his formula is pretty simple: well-appointed loops, drums that click more than they crack, sharp-witted couplets delivered in a present but aloof monotone. It’s a heavy-lidded vibe, mildly psychedelic like a morning without caffeine, moving slowly but deliberately.
Morph’s cultivation of the ultimate chill—a trait that feels endemic to his personality, no matter the circumstances of his life—seems almost to exist in a state of inertia. He smokes from a bottomless bag of weed, sips from a sommelier’s fantasy draft list, and chooses entrees you can’t pronounce from menus you can’t afford. His writing and delivery go hand in hand; instead of sitting at the front of the beat, Morph’s voice tucks into its nooks until he becomes one of its features, another element in a lush, swirling soundscape. You can listen to his unhurried cadence and resonant tenor and be swept away by his body-high sonics, but eventually, you’ll catch a line that makes your eyes widen and ears perk. An edge of anger and paranoia lies beneath his laid-back demeanor: Between the fly lifestyle moments and flicks of his lighter, Morph also synthesizes entire libraries of Black radical tradition and memorizes where all the exits are. Sometimes, the hazy cloud that hovers over his work starts to feel like a weighted blanket.
On A Spyglass to One’s Face, his newest album and second collaboration with Charlotte producer Dirty Art Club, Yungmorpheus is feeling more destabilized than usual. He often switches between points of view in his raps, giving the sense that it can be easier to create a character to analyze one’s thoughts than look internally. Maybe he’s dissociating, maybe it’s unconscious—either way, Morph makes a habit of stepping outside of himself. He’s never had much of a preference for complicating his song structures, preferring to unspool his thoughts through one long verse and immediately moving on to the next. That approach hasn’t changed much here, but he lets the beats ride a little more than usual, allowing his thoughts just a smidge more breathing room. Dirty Art Club’s production, as lush and airy as anything Morph’s rapped on, feels sharper than his typical saturated palette. The flurries of tape static have been scrubbed off, and there’s a clarity to the samples, as though Morph is standing in the middle of the round, directing a live band. It’s the best distillation of the Yungmorpheus idea, keeping his laconic sound intact but shining light on the anxiety that simmers beneath. It all makes Morph seem livelier, more outwardly vulnerable and approachable.
Admittedly, the ground tread on A Spyglass to One’s Face isn’t all that different from that of Waking Up & Choosing Violence, Morph’s 2024 pairing with producer Alexander Spit, or 2023’s From When It Came, which featured production from blunted underground heavies like Ohbliv, Shungu, and August Fanon. Dirty Art Club taps into the ’60s jazz, ’70s soul, and ’80s boogie that Morph has spent a decade blending together, but he also knows the exact pockets that complement his voice. Most tracks still carry Morph’s signature feel: spacious, hypnotic, midtempo grooves with crumbling, barely there drums and the occasional earwormy melody. But Dirty Art Club elevates beyond simple loops, finding the most verdant bits of his source material and chopping them together into little hooky bits. Consider the noodly jazz guitar on “Allways Part Deux,” the occasional quick flute trill on “Prisoner’s Handbook,” the squawking saxophone on “Bouillabaisse Beach.” He finds the most human moments—the flubs, the embellishments—and makes them the focal point of each piece.
Perhaps it’s these little flourishes that push Morph’s writing a little deeper. There’s a new concern with aging and mortality, a recognition that the frantic pace he used to operate at might be unsustainable. “Time flies, eyes wide/Just the other day I could’ve died,” goes the hook on “10,700 Days,” a posse cut that features Cavalier, Lukah, and Zeroh. It’s an inspired A&R choice, as they’re some of the most existentialist rappers in the underground, all of whom, Morph included, grapple with their inability to predict the future. Morph writes with a touch more specificity than before, outlining concerns that have sharpened over the years. He has a better sense of when he’s getting scammed; he grieves the ends of friendships; he recognizes more of his father in himself. It’s subtle—Morph slips these moments between more characteristic mentions of concealing weed in his carry-on and checking the duck confit in his oven—but it’s there. There’s a lesson here, cliché as it may be: If you make room for your own humanity, you might become a truer version of yourself.
