Groovy Steppin Sht*, Lisha G and Trini Viv’s new set of prismatic bangers, emerged from a head-scratching linkup. While studying the music business at Drexel University, Trini Viv started fucking with the South Carolina rapper’s sound, paid her to rap on one of his beats, and some emails, weed, and studio sessions later, the tape was born.
That origin story reflects in the music: There’s a thrillingly out-of-place, out-of-space quality to Groovy Steppin Sht*. Here you’ve got two totally different artists: In one corner, Lisha G, who says she grew up in the “country country” of Camden, South Carolina, where she first recorded in a barn, and is best known for hazy, red-eyed plugg in conversation with the Atlanta underground. In the other corner, Trini Viv, a recent college grad from the Philly suburbs whose zany, Pharrell-meets-Pi’erre-Bourne beats constantly bubble and shape-shift like the Thing. Together, their sound is one-of-one—psychedelic shit-talk that sounds more like it was born from alien communication than the nth Yeat album. Lisha’s blunted formalism reels Trini’s watercolor synths into her world, just as Trini pushes Lisha out of her comfort zone. Like WiFiGawd and Tony Seltzer’s Heat Check, or BoofPaxkMooky and GRIMM Doza’s I’ve Been High for Days, or even this year’s J.U.S./Squadda B tape, it’s one of those perfectly peculiar marriages of tough underground rapper and nerdy beatmaker that only comes around every so often.
Once a sneering firebrand in the vein of Rico Nasty, Lisha G has since settled into a colder, more nonchalant style more similar to Tony Shhnow or the late Enchanting. It’s all the more surgical: She sinks her teeth deeper when she casts off bars like subtweets. The appeal here isn’t the subject matter, which is mostly regular shit—getting high, getting money, blowing up, guys blowing her phone up—so much as her calm delivery and sneaky acrobatics. See how, on “Wanna Bet,” she revs into triplets for two bars before sinking back into a somber, Gucci-type pitter-patter: “The way I’m living… it get rough. It get tough/Ain’t no way I’m giving up.”
Her swag is fully unlocked by Trini Viv’s groggy seventh chords and stuttering keyboard flourishes. His beats function as a sort of chiaroscuro, magnifying Lisha’s icy calm with dense synth flutters and deeply shaded pads. The epic stomp of “Fatal Attraction,” for instance, transforms Lisha’s account of a passionate fling into an lusty Insecure subplot. Sometimes, it sounds like Trini is directly producing around Lisha’s bars, or Lisha is riffing on his melodic stabs. As Trini blows a synthetic horn and lays down searing, DJ Toomp-esque chords on “Choppa Sound,” Lisha gets in mode, rapping devilishly about guns blazing and karmic retribution. Other times, Lisha uses Trini’s oddball tapestries to bulldoze the emotionally unavailable types: “Don’t be acting strange, you don’t feel my pain/You say that you love me but don’t feel the same,” she huffs on “Heavy Metal.”
Based on your music diet, Groovy Steppin Sht* might sound a little like Zaytoven, or the Neptunes, or early Odd Future, or contemporary genre omnivores like BNYX and Lucid Monday. My favorite moment, the blaring “Get Silly,” asks what the 2020s equivalent to a Wiz Khalifa/Sledgren tape would be. Trini Viv’s work here is the stuff of Backwoods benders, full of tinny little runs that cascade like Tetris blocks down a screen. Lisha matches the vibe with sedated, get-money raps. It wouldn’t sound totally out of place on a hip-hop blog in 2009, an era wherein stars were made by gleefully rapping about getting stoned and genuinely unconventional collaborations like this were sought out and rewarded. “Girl relax, just smoke some weed,” Lisha sighs, a word for the jealous types, and maybe also for you as you get sucked into the wondrous digital sludge of Groovy Steppin Sht*.
