Day 90: Rapsody — Laila’s Wisdom
This year, the folks over at the Recording Academy tasked with checking the pulse of the music world and coming up with a list of Grammy nominees didn’t really fuck up this time around. There were no old white dudes were nominated for album of the year based solely on their ability to stay alive, and the artists selected in other categories mostly seem like valid choices. Plus Mastodon got nominated again, so we’ll get to see them troll everyone before getting kicked out.
Among those rightful nominees was Rapsody, whose album Laila’s Wisdom got the nod for best rap album. Though the North Carolina native will face an uphill battle to beat out more household names like Jay-Z (who signed her to Roc Nation), Kendrick Lamar, Migos, and Tyler the Creator to claim her first Grammy, her inclusion among them isn’t just a token effort to toss in a female MC for the sake of representation. Laila’s Wisdom is itself a worthy contender, showcasing Rapsody’s poetic skill on the mic and gifts as a storyteller, achieving all the end goals of conscious rap without falling prey to the subgenre’s more eye-rolling tendencies.
Though her flow has far more in common with spoken word performances than Soundcloud noisemaking, the prioritization of substance ensures that her bars often land with a greater rhetorical force than those of trend-chasing contemporaries. Her work on the album’s eponymous opening track encapsulates this idea nicely. Over a 9th Wonder sample of Aretha Franklin’s “Young, Gifted, and Black,” Rapsody subtly positions herself as “the difference between McDonald’s, Burger King, and Whole Foods,” and backing it up with a bar that flips the racist assumptions behind the 3/5ths clause, elevating herself from subhuman to superhuman. That self-constructed, slow-burning approach to lyricism pays dividends over the course of her deep dives into love (self and other-oriented), insecurities, celebrations and struggles. Along the way, we’re left with clever turns of phrase about everything from self-empowerment to snapchat gossip and everyone from Asata Shakur to gold-digging partners, with Rapsody employing Lil Wayne’s knack for puns and portmanteaus with decidedly more restraint.
Rapsody’s also got a knack for storytelling, knowing when to break from her established template to speak in ways that standard rhymes simply won’t allow. It’s hard to tell if she’s speaking autobiographically at the end of “Nobody” and throughout the three-song suite of “A Rollercoaster Jam Called Love” through “Knock on my Door” or inhabiting a character, but the tales are universal either way. She can inject personality and pathos into her tracks, hiding meaning and message into what might be falsely perceived as castoff interludes. An album this long requires more than sustained sprints of 16 bars to sustain itself, and her deviation from that format tends to deliver.
Despite what can feel like the occasional inflexibility of her flows, the obvious chemistry between 9th Wonder and his North Cackalackian protegé ensures that Rapsody can consistently play to her strengths. Though his beats are as beats are as silky and soulful as they’ve ever been, he does an excellent job of creating a pocket for her, finding a sweet spot that’s neither minimalist nor hyperactive.
She also knows how to pick her collaborators, and find a space that suits them. When Kung-Fu Kenny returns the favor for Rapsody’s contribution to “Complexion” on “Power”, it sounds like TPAB loosie, with a buzzsaw bassline giving Kendrick the kind of wave that he can ride more comfortably than anyone else. Anderson Paak’s eventual appearance on “Nobody” feels like a foregone conclusion given the tenor of the album’s instrumentals, but is welcome nonetheless. Just as he does in his own work, Paak makes sure things stay light and breezy, offering a welcome counterweight that lifts Rapsody up into a more carefree space on “Oooweee”. Busta Rhymes, sounding like he just finished a really nice cigar, shows up to do his “Barry White shit”, which is definitely raunchier than last year’s work adjacent to A Tribe Called Quest. Black Thought doesn’t rap for ten minutes, so that’s a disappointment, but the hour and four minute runtime was approaching wrap-up music length as it was.
I wouldn’t bet money on Rapsody winning that Grammy, but it’s not for a lack of trying. Laila’s Wisdom shows how serious she is about her craft, aiming for something more profound than mass popularity and an easy paycheck. To hear her tell it, money hardly factors into the equation at all. This year’s slate of nominations is the exception to the rule that the Grammys no longer serve as an arbiter of taste. But hopefully having her name show up alongside Jay-Z and Kendrick — two true gatekeepers who can vouch for her talent — is enough to lead Rapsody towards even loftier achievements in the years ahead.
This is Day 90 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more.
