At the wild, cramped party that is Los Angeles rap, Boogie’s the guy sitting in the corner, sermonizing about the desperate conditions black parents in his neighborhood face while flicking through photos of his son on his iPhone. The deep-thinking lyricist might be straight outta Compton at a time when the city is the center of the hip-hop universe again, but he’s kept his lens focused on his own. Even the one unequivocal banger in his canon, “Oh My,” was about poverty and police brutality when you stripped out the high-rise keys and booming bass.
The impressive Thirst 48 and The Reach mixtapes—released in 2014 and 2015, respectively—found Boogie pondering the kind of issues that keep South Los Angeles parents up at night. That both were released on his young son’s birthday signaled their heavily personal nature. Thirst 48 Pt. II might be presented as a sequel to his debut, but it feels like an advancement of his style. Boogie has emerged from behind his living room curtain and stepped into the California sun, slickly shifting from the blurry synths and lurid drum machines that punctuate most of his catalog to a brighter sound that embraces his geographical roots.
It’s not like Boogie has dropped the pen, though. On opener “Still Thirsty,” he shuffles through all the issues weighing on his mind: the pressure to succeed, fear of poverty, relationship hang-ups, parental struggles. “We went from tears at the bottom ’til we almost top tier,” he raps, “my biggest fear is I don’t finish through.” Moments on Thirst 48 Pt. II underline what we already knew: the South Angelino is one of the sharpest West Coast writers right now.
Boogie raps over piano chords with the same open-book sentiment that Tupac once did. The sweetly caressed keys of “Won’t Be the Same” channel the spirit of “I Ain’t Mad at ‘Cha,” if ‘Pac rapped about his girl instead of an old friend. That line connecting past to present is crystallized on the DJ Quik-featuring “Fuck ‘Em All.” With Sacramento’s Mozzy brought along for the trip, the trio rib over the kind of wonky, tweaked-out beat Snoop and posse would have jumped on and had a ball with in the mid-’90s. Boogie adapts to these good-time flavors as easily as he once skulked in the sonic shadows.
Elsewhere, “Slide on You” sees him go down in the DMs over some smooth ratchet finger snaps. “Sunroof,” meanwhile, is better than any rap song that rides an acoustic guitar has any right to be. Boogie shows California love on the West Coast anthem, which channels everything from ‘Pac’s odes to his home state to the sweet ’60s harmonies of the Mamas & the Papas. But he’s not in a such a positive mood that he can’t work in a line like, “You a good day, you like a hood day with no police.”
With this shift in lanes, Boogie sometimes sounds like he’s trying to run the modern-day commercial rap gambit. He gives a report on a new relationship through the prism of their social media interactions on “Two Days,” and ponders stealing his friend’s girl on “Just Might.” (“I just might fuck your wifey out of spite,” he sneers). There’s a newfound level of steel in his voice on the latter. It’s evidence that his flow has sharpened year after year. Pt. II’s free throw percentage would have been bolstered by the inclusion of pre-release singles “Out My Way (Bitter Raps II)” and “Man Down.” But the tape does something more crucial: it proves that even when he falls into line, Boogie still stands out from the crowd.
