The chemistry innate to a rapper-producer duo is something worthy of respect, whether the fruits of the dynamic are successful or not. It’s evidence of mirroring, an essential element of identity formation, relationship building, and confidence: I see something of myself in you/your work—let’s try a thing. Ultimately, the best collaboration is about ceding control, which is rare amongst the alpha personalities that dominate rap. But the truth is, most of the best rap isn’t made in a vacuum with just a Dropbox of raw, outsourced beats, but from a certain collaborative dance duet. Take Guru and DJ Premier, Dr. Dre and Eminem, Madlib and MF DOOM, Clipse and the Neptunes, DJ Mustard and YG, Killer Mike and El-P.
What makes this dynamic even more interesting is when one of the partners is multi-talented. Like Madlib or Kanye West before him, on The Night Took Us in Like Family producer and rapper Jeremiah Jae relinquishes his own production know-how to focus on rapping. Jae’s production work on Flying Lotus’ hallucinatory Captain Murphy project and his own projects for Brainfeeder and Warp are often abrasive and off kilter; unlike his partner L’Orange’s production work on The Night, it is hardly ever obviously soulful. Even when Jae tweaks a classic it always sounds a little foreboding, like macerating the hot sugar of Aretha Franklin’s voice by boring into the downbeat and detuning her on his 2010 flip of her "One Step Ahead" (best known as the sample for Mos Def’s "Ms. Fat Booty"). The ghost of that song can be heard on The Night in the smoky, soulful, sped-up swing of "Part Two: God Complex", which one of a handful of short instrumental interludes that helps set the album’s Bogart-soused, B&W tone.
If the clips of film dialogue don’t give it away then the mid-century camp will, from jazz and lounge samples, down to the fingersnaps ("The Lineup"). This is an aesthetic concept record (billed, cringingly, as "noir hop") that teasingly ponders the idea of gangster rap from another era—pre-Scarface, for once. It’s an interesting approach, especially for illuminating the way popular culture has nefariously oversimplified the image of the "gangster"—a phrase often used as a contemptuous shorthand for rappers in particular, and black men more broadly—throughout time.
Like the swarthy-voiced Bogart, Jae’s distinctive mumble—mumblier, even, than Earl Sweatshirt—plays unreliable narrator over these 18 tracks. Call it method rapping. One minute he’s confident and smug (on the fast-slow bop of "The Lineup") and the next he lurks ("Invisible in a drop, invisible you cannot see me, don't let the cops see"). But he’s mostly paranoid, dogged by frauds and foes, and concerned with getting "down like James Brown when them rounds go off." L’Orange builds a gilded stage from a clutter of film, soul, and synth samples, refurbishing the worn 9th Wonder/early-Kanye warped soul template. It’s a pretty seamless pairing; these two have similar ideas about the completeness of a piece of music.
