Lushlife is a true Philadelphia hybrid, an artist who has spent his career bridging the gap between the city’s hip-hop and indie rock scenes. First as a mash-up artist and more recently, as a rapper and producer, he’s worked to convene dissimilar sounds and musicians in service of his vision. On his latest full-length, Ritualize, his curatorial instincts have kicked into overdrive. "We on that lush Primavera sound," Lushlife quips on the title track. And indeed, the credits for the album read like the lineup for an eclectic music festival, ranging from singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler to little-known Philly rapper Yikes the Zero.
This time around, Lushlife has even outsourced some of the production, abandoning the warm boom-bap of his earlier, self-produced work in favor of collaborations with Philly electro trio CSLSX. The end result is a soaring, cinematic sound rooted in live instruments that’s more M83 than Mobb Deep. There’s an impressive range on display here, from the orchestral prog of "Burt Reynolds (Desert Visions)" to the William Basinski tribute "Integration Loop." Many of the album's guests add to the richness of the production as well. RJD2 gets a co-production credit on the heady, multi-part "Toynbee Suite," I Break Horses contribute swells of psychedelic guitar and spectral backing vocals to "The Waking World," and Ariel Pink stops by for some unabashed Vangelis worship, helping evoke the neon glow of Blade Runner’s slick, wet streets on"Hong Kong (Lady of Love)."
While all this music provides ample grist for the mill, Lushlife rarely manages to wrest the listener’s attention away from the backdrop. He essentially has one flow—a breathless, nasal, Ghostface-esque cadence—but lacks Tony Starks’ charisma or storytelling ability. Lyrically, his bars are peppered with signifiers of taste: he’s shouting out Roky Erickson, Mary Timony, and Isabella Rossellini, sipping on barleywine and La Fin du Monde. Thanks to his straight-faced delivery, however, all these references feel humorless, like Das Racist without the irony. He attempts to squirm into a few interesting perspectives—for example, Mark David Chapman’s on "The Waking World"—but largely trawls the surface, delivering punchlines like, "He hold the heat standing outside of the Dakota watching/ While Holden Caulfield just telling him when to let the glock spit." At one point he refers to his style as "Bottle Rocket rap," which certainly doesn't help the perception that this is hip-hop music for the Wes Anderson set.
These deficiencies come into sharper focus when Lushlife is forced to share space with more seasoned rappers. Philly lifer Freeway sounds revitalized on "Strawberry Mansion," following serious health issues last year; while his performance isn’t quite "Cannon"-level here, hearing him rap over a sunny, synth-driven instrumental is a thrill unto itself. By his own high standards, Killer Mike’s verse on "This Ecstatic Cult" sounds phoned in but even so, he manages to run circles around Lushlife without lifting a finger. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best verse on Ritualize comes from the hungriest emcee of the bunch: North Carolina rapper Deniro Farrar. Farrar's deliberate, grime-influenced flow sounds genuinely menacing set against "Incantation"’s spare backdrop of echoing snare hits and palm-muted guitar (Lushlife and CSLSX wisely let the otherwise busy beat drop out before Farrar gets on the mic).
While there is no shortage of interesting ideas or capable musicians on Ritualize, in the absence of a compelling vision, it doesn’t add up to much. As Lushlife surely knows, the thrill of a good mash-up comes from the tension of two disparate ideas rubbing up against each other and there are far too few of those moments to be found here. Ultimately, Ritualize feels like a party with plenty of interesting guests but little conversation—it’s hard not to blame the host.
