Has a rapper ever cared less than Larry June? For 15 years the San Francisco native has coasted on melodic G-funk beats—courtesy of either Cardo or one of Cardo’s many imitators—adorning them with autopilot rhymes and the most tedious ad-libs (“Oh my god!” “Goddamn!” “Good job, Larry!”) known to man. June cruises along on instinct, his casual affect reflecting his producers’ languid tempos. His penchant for luxuries great and small, Supras and smoothies, lends him something of an everyman quality, but even that’s contradicted by his insipid hustle-culture mantras. When he breaks into motivational platitudes (“Keep going, Larry!”), you find yourself bracing for an Herbalife pitch.
Doing It for Me (who else would he be doing it for?) assembles the usual roster of A-list producers: Harry Fraud, Cookin Soul, and Jose Rios are all aboard. It’s some of the best music June’s compiled to date, further exposing his lackadaisical tendencies. “Magnum P.I.” weaves a fuzzy guitar, winding bassline, and purring synth into a lush, suggestive wash; June arrives in a Rolls-Royce sipping jasmine tea and clocks out in under two minutes. He’s here solely to fill space: “I’m all on FaceTime wit’ her, I’m kinda feelin’ this bitch/I love how that bitch talk, it’s so appealin’ and shit.” Anyone else would’ve considered this a reference track.
Plenty of rappers owe their success to proximity, to being in the room whenever a great beat came on: Mack 10, Le$, any number of L.A. County weed-carriers who lucked into Battlecat tracks. (Jay Worthy can’t rap like Nas, but Nas doesn’t pick beats like Jay Worthy.) The job is to stay out of the way, and June has a rare talent for mucking things up. “Where I’m Going” and “Real Talk, Pt. 2” are aggravatingly simplistic, rhyming the same words for verses at a time. “Cleaning My Spot (Interlude)” is a three-minute humblebrag, June cataloging all the stuff in his house he has to dust. His bulleted diaries are static and repetitive, evoking uncanny solitude: He skims bank statements, sends a few texts, checks his oil gauge, and drinks orange juice. There isn’t a single guest across Doing It for Me’s 15 tracks—June has a house full of toys, and no one to play with.
If he’s a lone wolf on record, June’s vacation-rap philosophy has been embraced by a growing cohort of rappers spanning the Gulf Coast through Texas and points west. Layering ’80s soul samples with 808 drums and semi-improvised lifestyle bars, they’re prone to stock imagery: palm trees, turn-of-the-century imports, and Diamond Collection sportswear. Producers Tavaras Jordan and DJ Mr. Rogers are disciples of Houston legend DJ Screw, adapting the woozy tempos and verse-hook structures of his ’90s work. But the movement’s origins date to 2004, when Lil Wayne boasted he was done writing rhymes—to hear him tell it, everything from Tha Carter on was a glorified freestyle. His protégé Curren$y seized the baton with an assembly-line approach, churning out low-overhead projects credited to individual producers, often just weeks apart.
The lesson, for June’s closest peers—Dallas’ AJ Snow, St. Louis’ Dom Venice, Georgia’s Monroe Flow, L.A.’s Niko G4—was that smooth beats and intuitive style could compensate for low-energy performance and barely-there lyrics. It’s prescriptive mood music, and at its best Doing It for Me models an unpretentious sense of purpose. The romantic instrumentals of “Breakfast in Gold Coast” are like waking up in silk sheets, and “Imported Couches” has a string arrangement Lenny Williams would kill for. June abandons rapping entirely on “Stinson Beach,” transforming into a ’70s soul man over the track’s punchy horns. It’s a brilliant deployment of his gravelly voice, reminiscent of Z-Ro’s forays into quiet storm, and the change of clothes does wonders.
Doing It for Me may prove a transitional record given June’s experiments with melody, but his faux pas are glaring in light of such magnificent production. Even the ballads are banal and acquisitive, delivered with the same thousand-yard stare as June’s paeans to cars and fruit juice. Ostensibly a love song, “A Little While” is the shuffling declaration of a sheepish prom date: “When we first started talkin’, it was easy and shit/Finally found somebody I like, I was thankful and shit.” All this macking and stacking should come with some sort of payoff, but it’s always more chores and traffic. You can’t help but imagine what a more dynamic artist would’ve done with these arrangements, because the worst part of a Larry June song is inevitably Larry June.
