The drive north from New Orleans up to Hammond, La., takes about an hour on the I-55, a lakeside route that offers the optimal listening experience for Hate Songs, according to local driver James Prudhomme. Take the trip for yourself with the help of Google Street View, and the wide-open waterscape of the bayou feels a world away from the Southern city streets that birthed trap, the style most closely associated with Prudhomme’s bass-heavy Suicideyear project. But if the tranquil backdrop seems at odds with his blown-out productions, it nevertheless chimes perfectly with Prudhomme’s melancholy introspection. And seeing as Southern hip-hop has always been optimized for the automobile, with window-rattling subwoofers adding to the 808’s visceral punch, it follows that we’d eventually find this solitary producer enjoying a drive outside the city limits.
The NOLA resident, formerly of Baton Rouge, made his name with two albums of gloomy, trap-derived beats released when he was still a teen. They stood out from the SoundCloud masses thanks to their woozy intensity and grandly baroque melodies, a combination that appealed as much to outsider rappers like Swedish sad boy Yung Lean and “Weird Atlanta” representative Rome Fortune as it did to cerebral electronic producers like Oneohtrix Point Never, whose Software label put out Prudhomme’s 2014 EP Remembrance. In the years since, Prudhomme has toured the U.S. and Europe and found himself absorbing influences—house, grime, and regional club styles—that have nudged his productions further towards the dancefloor. (Helpfully, he has also finally turned 21.)
The Hate Songs EP appears on the Scottish label LuckyMe, home to the trap-EDM chimeras of TNGHT, and Baauer, and the change of scene has injected a fresh energy into his work. These six songs were made between 2014 and 2015, when Prudhomme was relocating from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and finding his feet as a touring artist. Where previous Suicideyear records felt like the handiwork of a bedroom-bound stoner raised on DatPiff and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, on Hate Songs there’s a whiff of fresh air and a sense of widening horizons. “Summer Hate,” one of four tracks named for the seasons, finds his standard-issue, blown-out 808s brightened by tinkling keys, while trap-style hi-hats are smothered in grainy, heavily delayed synths.
“Mosh Mosh (Julie’s Song)” rolls along on clanging bells and a hint of Southern Gothic melodrama until the whole thing falls apart midway through, stuttering to a crawl before a soothing organ melody appears in the mist and the beat evolves into a half-time serenade. On “Flood (Autumn Hate),” written about Hurricane Isaac, a blown-out blast of reedy melody crumbles over trap drums, sounding like one of William Basinski’s disintegration loops. Prudhomme understands how to squeeze that little extra drop of emotion from familiar elements; back on the Street View cruise up I-55, clicking my way along a highway built on concrete stilts, his melancholy maximalism offers a different perspective of the view, just as the water below reflects the open sky.
Much of the EP deals in these satisfying twists on a tried-and-tested concept, but the most impressive track is also the most daring. “Spent Days Watching Horses Die” is a violent, monstrous hybrid—blown-to-bits bass overlaid with shredded, piercing synths that connect the tacky euphoria of trance with the vicious club mechanics of Kamixlo or Amnesia Scanner—while the crackly 2-step drums underfoot acknowledge Prudhomme’s newfound UK influences. It’s here at the edge of the familiar, in the greyish territory where new mutations both stimulate and irritate, where Prudhomme’s vision feels most vital. Hate Songs sounds like a set of markers on his route out of town and away from a sound he’s done much to develop, perfect, and effectively complete; there are strong signs this will be a journey worth following.
