Chattanooga MC Isaiah Rashad wears his anxieties. They bleed through the rap revelry in verse, as if they could consume him at any moment. Is he about to stunt, or is he about to self-destruct? It makes his songs more like inkblots in a Rorschach test: What you see in them may depend on where you currently are on the spectrum—longing, laboring, or lost. Rashad appeared fully-formed on his debut Cilvia Demo as a young rap star in the making constantly humanizing himself before eyewitnesses with bars like “I done grown up for my child’s sake.” It was clear early on that he wasn’t afraid to publicly grapple with his demons. “Now, I’m praying that I make it to 25/They be calling doctors for my health/And ‘no’ is kinda hard to say to drugs/’Cause I been having problems with myself,” Rashad rapped on “Heavenly Father.” He turned 25 this year, but it was a rocky road getting here.
In the two quiet years since Isaiah Rashad released Cilvia, his inactivity fed his addiction, and vice versa. During a stint on Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron tour in 2014, he got hooked on a potent brew of Xanax and alcohol, a concoction used to numb himself during an ongoing battle with depression. Drug dependency threatened to derail a promising career and almost getting him dropped from Top Dawg Entertainment on a handful of occasions. “I can’t admit, I’ve been depressed/I hit a wall, ouch,” he raps on “Dressed Like Rappers” from his long-awaited follow-up, The Sun’s Tirade. It’s an album that examines the strain of family ties, smalltown spokesmanship, and self-awareness. The Sun’s Tirade is brutally honest and open, a record saddled by substance abuse and melancholia. These are soul-baring cuts lined with pent-up emotions from the tour, which “BDay” hints at in a single lyric: “How do you tell the truth to a crowd of white people?”
Fittingly, though, Rashad really finds his voice on The Sun’s Tirade, an album filled with the tensions caused by a cycle of self-loathing and self-discovery. The tension is usually built up in his cadences with his uncanny sense for when to give and when to pull back. His voice can deflate in an instant or shrink to a mumble or mushroom into singsong. Raps tumble, sputter, and croak, stretching his timbre’s range and depth. On “Tity and Dolla,” he tries on a slippery inflection that’s whiny and exaggerated, which later morphs into something snappier at the octave change. His voice nearly cracks on “Park” as he staggers through verse rapping quick hitters like “I’m tryna be Nicki Minaj/Rich as a bitch in the drop” and “Bitch have you tutored the pastor/I know the root and the master/I know the coupe was a casket.” “Rope // rosegold” showcases flows on opposite ends of the spectrum, the first an impassioned croon, the second something more intoned, canceling out the animated performance. On every line, he works toward lucidity.
The Sun’s Tirade remains heavy with sound and subject. Rashad often reveals his deepest misgivings and uncertainties and scales his woes with liquid courage, intoxicated and numb. But instead of a disorienting album that tries to replicate those druggy highs and lows, the songs are clear-eyed, sobering, and even more detail-oriented than Cilvia Demo with monster guest verses from TDE associates Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock and complementary ones from other contributors (SZA and Kari Faux, among others). There is even more precision and purpose in the raps here and an even stronger sense of identity. Take a standout like “Free Lunch,” which shows off his impeccable rhythm and timing, wading through a groovy tune tied together by a personal anecdote: The only numbers Rashad remembered as a kid were the last digits of his social security number, which was his access code for the free lunch program. Rashad connects the past and present together in an effort to understand his future.
The sonic template of The Sun’s Tirade is laid bare on “Brenda”: “Mix that Boosie with that boom bap.” There’s a similar palette to Cilvia Demo—as indebted to J Dilla production kits and Common’s Electric Circus as it is to Lil Wayne and Scarface—but this is far more adventurous on the back half. There’s a robotic Mike WiLL Made-It beat (“A Lot”), “Stuck in the Mud” splits itself in two with varying moods and textures, and the double-time “Don’t Matter” is the most uptempo thing he’s ever rapped on. These added dimensions bring variety to an otherwise uniform soundscape. Rashad has a way of making styles his own, shaving influences down until they bear his signature while paying homage along the way. “Silkk Da Shocka,” which carries on Rashad’s legacy of songs named after Southern rappers (there’s also the smooth 2 Chainz salute on “Tity and Dolla”), is a spiritual successor to “West Savannah” in aim and sound, moving in tandem with the Internet’s Syd over a slow-rolling, bluesy riff. The songs create a similar aesthetic blend to Cilvia Demo, processing regional rap staples through a soul filter.
But The Sun’s Tirade isn’t just Cilvia Demo: Redux. It’s a complex portrait of a man in transition. The album is an evolution for an artist who still may have his best in store. Development and maturation are themes unfolding in both Isaiah Rashad’s lyrics and personal life, and that overlap produced one of the great rehab records in recent memory, a collection of songs that both diagnose and medicate. “Can I sleep for a while? Can I work on myself?” Rashad asks on “Stuck in the Mud.” Wallowing in isolation and self-pity nearly drove one of rap’s most promising talents to implode. The Sun’s Tirade is a moving triumph to facing your demons and coming out on the other side one step closer to whole.
