Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon begins As of Now by paraphrasing a meme. “OK, I’m posted on the operate within the nook, they usually don’t even know,” he raps, his helium-tinged voice scooting via a flute pattern. He pauses barely, conscious {that a} well-placed area in a sentence can seismically shift its influence: “…what I’m ’bout to do/I ask my boo, ‘Can we maintain it low?’” When you catch the cleverness of his comedic timing (they undoubtedly know what he’s about to do), you need to run the observe again and pay attention for the previous adlib, pushed low within the combine like a mischievous secret: “Watch this.”
You may nearly see the glint in his eye as he unspools the remainder of his soliloquy, oscillating between bleak particulars of threadbare pillows on entice home flooring and shoulder-brushing flexes of cross-country flights and celeb inexperienced rooms. When the beat switches, changing the paisley jazz loop with a pulverized breakbeat and keyboard, it’s like an abrupt shift in lighting, shadows masking locations you didn’t know might go darkish. Jah-Monte’s informal supply doesn’t change, nevertheless it immediately feels lethal severe. When the hook comes again round, he’s nonetheless posted in that nook, this time rubbing his fingers collectively like a Birdman response gif. The tune units up the impish opposition at play all through As of Now, the place Jah-Monte tempers vignettes of heartbreak and hustling with an amiable, absurdist wit.
No rating but, be the primary so as to add.
Jah-Monte’s been releasing music for simply over a decade, however within the dozen or so releases since 2019’s Jewellery Rap, the Charlotte rapper has actually hit his stride. His uniquely disarming humorousness augments—and typically masks—the complexity of his style and technical capacity. In shakier fingers, his output—like 2021’s Navy Blue-produced Fantastically Black or his 2023 collaboration with Sadhugold, The Black Messiah—is likely to be lumped into the glut of strong, barely stoned underground information that disappear as quickly because the needle lifts. As a substitute, they’re instantly approachable however concurrently layered and rewarding listens, filled with delicate one-liners and detailed tales, incisive as they’re droll.
As of Now is the peak of Jah-Monte’s capacity. A line like “Exterior whilst you working distant” from “Instagram Highlights” establishes his bona fides and elicits a chuckle in a matter of seconds; when he casually drops, “I had run off on my plug, he was chasing me with a Glock” on “Butter Leather-based Climate,” it feels good-natured and humorous regardless of what he’s describing. He stitches tracks along with interstitial moments that foreground the enjoyable of the report, like interludes that includes the voice of a lady named Milly, who seems a number of instances to declare it “the perfect album ever.” The skit that ends the album, “Lord Jah-Monte’s #1 Supporter,” is a compilation of voicemails presumably left by an obsessed hater, spinning up artistic methods to name Jah-Monte a bitch. It’s weird and ridiculous, a little bit of ending salt to the report’s dueling vibes of “aw shucks” and “don’t fuck with me.”
