In January of last year, the Detroit rapper Boldy James was involved in a car accident that left him in critical condition, with broken vertebrae in his neck and various other orthopedic injuries. When he was eventually released from the hospital, he was paralyzed from the neck down. “Screws and rods all in my shit, I couldn’t do nothin,’” he says on the outro to “Brand New Chanel Kicks,” the lead single for Penalty of Leadership, his haunting second full-length with Montreal producer Nicholas Craven. He recorded that song at his home while in a wheelchair and neck brace, barely a week after he left a physical rehabilitation center. You can hear the strain—his smooth upper baritone, usually fluid and nonchalant, sounds sleepy and stiff. But that doesn’t stop the somber magic of Boldy’s writing and the psychedelic charm of Craven’s sampled chimes; here, their morbid fairy tales are as poignant as ever.
It takes a lot to humble a rapper like Boldy: The vast majority of his songs feature more close calls and dead ends than many people will see in a lifetime, but the crash seems to have jostled something loose in him. What made last year’s Fair Exchange No Robbery so special was Craven’s unvarnished loops and Boldy’s rhymes; the samples unfurled naturally before folding back into themselves like origami, while the bars—blunt and elegant as a fat pinky ring—found the sweet spot between bitter wins and triumphant losses. On Penalty of Leadership, the duo takes another step in this direction, using the grief of Boldy’s accident as a springboard for stories that are variably uplifting and unsettling.
Contending with mortality always plays a crucial role in Boldy’s songs, but here, the paranoia and scars from friendships snuffed out too soon linger more than usual. Take “Evil Genius,” where he weighs the consequences of his “thug livin’” against the memories of his departed friends and his future as an artist: “Shit that they gon’ hold against me when I’m Grammy-nominated/I just wish the bro was with me; look at all the time we wasted.” The swelling accordion and raspy drums are streaked with digital echoes; the effect is as melancholy as the references to powder white enough to make snow angels. His cutthroat chronicles of his hometown—punctuated by vivid details like specific street names—are usually delivered in a cocksure monotone. Stacked alongside the trauma Boldy recently survived, his words feel even more dire.
There is still plenty of business-as-usual storytelling. True to form, Boldy’s imagery is effortlessly sharp, but the unease over what he risks losing puts an asterisk on everything he does. On “Murderous Tendencies,” robberies are sandwiched between harrowing odes to lost comrades and dead perps with tongues hanging out of their mouths like Michael Jordan. Stories of moving drugs and sipping lean hit different when you have to think about how that money can get your son suspended from school (as on “No Pun Intended”) or how your daughter’s “Straight As” could be cut short by being “caught slippin’ where you don’t belong.” He’s still proud of his status among the rabble-rousers of his city, but he’s also more cautious and willing to consider how his remaining family and friends fit into the equation.
Boldy is an adaptable MC, but unlike the Rorschach-style expansiveness of his previous collaborations with the Alchemist and genre-straddling Detroit producer Sterling Toles, Craven’s beats are as direct as Boldy’s writing. Neither has to do much work to meet the other in the middle, and Craven’s ear for beguiling samples sets up and maintains the energy of his creative partner’s tragicomic tales. The clunky organs and whispering violins on “Soccer Mom” are solemn yet campy, helping his bars elicit chuckles and sighs alike. On “Early Worms Get Birds,” thudding drums and piano chords give Boldy and guest Double Dee room to drop puns about Brock Lesnar and Madonna, showing that Boldy and Craven are capable of being whatever they need each other to be.
The pair’s chemistry is still potent enough to chill the blood running through your veins, and Boldy’s brush with death makes Penalty of Leadership a heavier and more reflective listen than their previous joint album. The Detroit rapper’s street sagas have always been white-knuckle levels of intense, but with higher stakes, the concrete feels icier, the creases on the dollar bills feel sharper, the weight of a Kel-Tec pistol enough to break a finger. The further the duo burrows into the darkness of their psyches, the brighter the gems they unearth.
