On “Highway", the second song on his Yung Archetype EP, Tunde Olaniran matter-of-factly lays out a winking indictment that seems to double as a mission statement: “We off punk, we on trap,” he intones. Coming in a long rap about fracking, incarceration trends, and, especially, people who shop at Whole Foods while frowning on dudes with sagging pants (“they're white but still like rap”), it's a sharp observation—made sharper by the fact that thematically it's basically a punk song delivered over a skittering trap beat that samples a parrot. This type of witty confusion interlaced with a broader social message is pretty much par for the course for Olaniran. If the winking, Carl-Jung-goes-hip-hop title of the project or its cover showing Olaniran with a grill and a jacket tailored out of traditional Nigerian lace fabric weren't clear enough indicators, let's just say it outright: He's ready to fuck with your expectations.
Part of this approach is simply something that's been thrust on Olaniran, whose music would rather explore identity than adhere to strict, conventional ideas of it. In interviews, he's talked about getting dismissed by blogs that say they don't cover hip-hop based on his picture while at the same time making music that didn't seem to belong on rap blogs. But he's also been a champion of the diversity of the music scene in his home of Flint, Michigan—a city, that, despite a rich musical history, is more commonly associated with industrial decline and crime—and he's vocal about making art from a place as an ally to marginalized groups. A Nigerian-American raised in London, Germany, and Flint whose formative musical experience was touring Europe with Berlin-based producer Phon.o after the two met on MySpace and collaborated, Olaniran's frame of reference is unsurprisingly broad. To further contextualize: He's collaborated extensively with the band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., and he's also known to keep a fog machine in the trunk of his car.
Even in this brief five-song offering, Olaniran tries on a lot of different ideas. His approach probably most closely resembles the kitchen-sink genre pastiche and loosely political brio of M.I.A. or, to some extent, the silly perceptiveness and electronic experimentation of rap acts like Das Racist and Le1f. The product is a pitch-perfect mashup of where pop-leaning underground music, or perhaps underground-aware pop music, stands in 2014, incorporating the rattling percussion of trap and dance music with a presentational, genre-spanning glam sensibility. “The Raven”, for instance, feels a little bit like what would happen if Ellie Goulding and A$AP Rocky teamed up to make a song about magic, pairing Olaniran's grandiose, swooping sung vocals with screwed-down raps about “witches in Williamsburg.” “Critical” finds Olaniran doing a solid James Blake impression shot through with Yeezus-style bursts of distortion.
The two-year-old “Brown Boy” might still be Olaniran's most vital offering, though, a thunderous, clattering four-alarm fire of a song. On "Brown Boy", Olaniran calmly cuts through by rapping lines like “And then these questions/ they can really trip me up/ Especially when they prove/ to be real tough/ Like can I be a man?/ Can I not love?” with a sardonic flair that seems increasingly profound on repeated listens. The hook offers a pithy look at racial prejudice that somehow manages to not feel reductive.
Not every moment of Yung Archetype is quite as lyrically smooth. Olaniran sometimes namechecks ideas where it might be useful to explore them, and he also has a tendency toward simple, clever similes like “go hard like Thanksgiving for vegans” that are funny but don't necessarily do much beyond fill space on repeated listens. “The Internet", while catchy and funny, can feel a little bit circular, since it's a song that will likely be talked about on the Internet that's in part about promoting music on the Internet (on the other hand, that's probably the appropriate feeling for it to have). But these issues are minor qualms that don't necessarily take away from the music and only stand out because of the brevity of the project. For the most part, Yung Archetype is an explosive, dynamic offering from what is clearly a restlessly creative talent. Olaniran's ideas could have massive reach—anyone who seems to gunning for David Bowie, Kanye West and Missy Elliott right out of the gate is clearly poised for some big stuff—and this is a great look at that process beginning to happen.
