Three songs into Murder During Drug Traffic, Boldy James sounds like he can barely keep his eyes open. Though his monotone hardly rises above a mumble on “Custo,” the vocals are aggressively, uncomfortably close; you can almost feel the wind of his breath as he enunciates each “p.” His verses are sharp and savage, complementing the blaring horns and twangy guitar licks, but Boldy himself is moments away from disappearing. He’s on his third cup of lean, the drug loosening his tether to reality, his brain cycling through memories fraught with tension and trauma. Something wicked and inescapable lurks around every corner and at the end of every stretch of highway; the recitation of a code he’s known all his life, “Either you the dealer or the custo,” is like a resignation to an inevitable fate.
For over a decade, Boldy’s been poring over these recollections, drawing from a seemingly bottomless well of heavy-lidded hustler tales. It can be hard to keep up with his output as he’s made a custom of dropping at least three or four albums every year, but he’s stayed fresh by teaming up with a succession of producers. In January 2023, Boldy and Blended Babies member RichGains released the excellent Indiana Jones, a strange and smoldering collection that felt like Boldy’s version of an acid-fried psych-rock record. It seemed to disappear almost immediately, partly because of its sharp deviation from the heavier boom-bap sounds of 2022’s Killing Nothing or Mr. Ten08, but mostly because it was overshadowed by a brutal car accident earlier in the month that left Boldy temporarily paralyzed. Listening to Indiana Jones now, it seems eerily prescient: Buried in the mix, Boldy’s vocals take on a disembodied affect, and the wispy guitars and reverberant synths swirl together in an anesthetic haze.
Now, two years later, RichGains and Boldy reunite on the similarly murky Murder During Drug Traffic, an impressive refinement of what made Indiana Jones so compelling. As on last year’s Penalty of Leadership, Boldy’s second album with Nicholas Craven, the crash looms large in his psyche. None of the shock and terror have faded, and Boldy seems unsure of exactly how to cope with the grief. The first lyrics on the album, “I don’t know how to feel,” are a plain-hearted lament, and even though they’re delivered with his signature stoicism, it’s perhaps the most nakedly emotional Boldy’s ever come across. Seconds later, though, he corrects himself. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to feel; it’s that he doesn’t want to. His vocals sit prominently in the mix throughout the album, devoid of modulating effects. Boldly’s indoor-voice raps can sound like he’s whispering in your ear, but these stark, intimate confessionals feel urgent, often desperate. He’s emerged from the miasmic fog of Indiana Jones, but its threatening presence hovers behind him, nipping at his heels.
RichGains crafts a flickering, neon-lit world that matches Boldy’s anxiety and paranoia, layering his instruments into rich, intricate arrangements. He keeps his deceptively complex tracks at promethazine-drip tempos, but nothing sits still; every loop or crisp drum pattern is a skeleton onto which Gains grafts new patches of skin. He’s adept at combining sounds that shouldn’t work into a smooth whole. “Telephono” is sinister Weather Channel jazz, growling synth bass, and wordless coos gliding easily over a jittery kick drum pattern. The guitar curlicues and screwed-down club beat of “Stay Mute,” which prompt Boldy to flex a chaotic punch-in style he doesn’t often employ, dramatically downshift into a dirty breakbeat groove for its wordless final passage. There’s a thin coating of reverb and distortion on every instrument and sample, giving the whole album the feeling of a sputtering candlewick.
Boldy’s music has always carried a tinge of sadness beneath its detached aura—the kinds of tragedies he describes would be hard for even the most unflappable brute to get past—but Murder During Drug Traffic touches on a deeper, more personal kind of melancholy. It’s an album more about dangerous drug consumption than the dangers of the drug trade, less concerned with the minute details of a pockmarked Detroit corner than addressing the complicated tangle of agony and panic that lingers after a near-death experience. Boldy’s one of the best rappers working—listen to the chemistry with fellow Motor City emcee Double Dee on “Days Go By” or his effortless triplet flows on “Made Man”—and it’s enchanting to hear him consider the knotty context of his past rather than its simple, brutal facts. It’s fitting that Gains samples Townes Van Zandt on “Skinny Me”: This is Boldy James’ blues album, the sound of an anguished man realizing the numbing agents aren’t working anymore.
