With about a minute left in BLACK’!ANTIQUE, Pink Siifu unfurls the moral of his dense parable through the voice of the Dungeon Family’s Big Rube. “When we were created, there was no mold/Just original style, with original soul,” Rube says, before launching into a measured diatribe about the ancestral sources and resounding strength of Black creativity. It’s the brand of stunning closing tableau Siifu has become adept at crafting—after lulling you into a daze with his meandering, creaky vocals against idyllic guitar and the sound of running water, he snaps the attention back. In a flash, Rube’s piercing baritone becomes the conduit for Siifu’s declaration: “My people are original and divinely unique,” he says, taking a prophetic tone for the album’s last breath. “And our value will keep rising, like some Black antiques.”
BLACK’!ANTIQUE is the fourth studio album from Siifu, and his first solo release since 2021’s Gumbo. Across the lush, laid-back melodies on his 2023 collaborations Leather Blvd. (with Ahwlee) and It’s Too Quiet..’!! (with Turich Benjy) and the reverse-engineered neo-soul, funk, and punk on the stellar Gumbo and 2020’s Negro, the Alabama-born artist has morphed his rapping to marry his creative impulses with influences like the Dungeon Family, Sun Ra, and Sly and the Family Stone. BLACK’!ANTIQUE continues to fulfill the prophecy of remaining “divinely unique”: This is Siifu at his boldest, oscillating from abrasive to soothing on a whim. Though some ideas are a bit rough around the edges, his vision is remarkably clear as he unwinds over the splendor of a vast production landscape.
Following in the community-built vein of Gumbo, BLACK’!ANTIQUE feels akin to a rambunctious family affair with frequent Siifu collaborators including artists Benjy, Liv.e, and V.C.R, and producers Roper Williams and HiTech. The 33-year-old rapper’s chameleonic ability to contort his croons and mutters to the surrounding atmosphere helps his guests feel comfortable—sometimes to the detriment of the record’s balance. There’s an unevenness to the album’s early stretch: Siifu’s furious shrieks are nearly overpowered by blaring, Inception-esque drones on the Williams-produced opener (“Black’!Antique”), and the combination of noise rap and ambient textures on “Alive and Direct’!” never seems to get off the ground. These aren’t stylistic departures for Siifu, but when held up against the groove he settles into throughout the rest of BLACK’!ANTIQUE, the extra entropy registers as out of place.
Like an art exhibition with enough room to peruse at your own pace, Siifu’s curatorial brilliance shines when he and his compatriots have room to explore. He dedicates “Screw4 life’! Ripjalen’!” to Houston legend DJ Screw and to his own lost loved ones, letting his wistful rambles bleed into each other before the energy flips into a macabre joyride. Standouts like “Girls Fall Out Tha Sky,” “Psa’!,” and “U.Already’!” stretch out past five minutes, as Benjy, 454, Jaas, Vayda, PRJR, and Pearl de Luna weave through Siifu’s strained delivery to propel the songs forward. “1:1[Fkdup.bezel],” which mutates from trap anthem to a bouncing club beat that sounds like an old Mario game level, allows Siifu and bbymutha to veer off the rails with technical brilliance. For large swaths of its runtime, BLACK’!ANTIQUE is a quintessential Siifu performance: He submerges his voice in the production and calls on others to join him as chopped ’90s R&B samples and serene ambient tones pull him in every direction at once. “They swear they got me figured out/They always trying to figure me out/What’s my next move?/What I’m up to?” Siifu raps on “Last One Alive’!,” blistering over a chipmunk sample and a saxophone loop straight out of a smoky ’60s jazz club. Not every intuition bears fruit, but more and more it is becoming clear that the iconoclastic rapper’s impulses are to be trusted.
