The first is stacked with rap features, and is much stronger than the second. The three tapes act as a precursor for 32 Levels, his debut LP on Columbia released this July.ģ2 Levels is a tale of two halves. To help stake his territory, Casino has self-released his productions on instrumental mixtapes, a move that aligns him with a world where rap producers like Metro Boomin’ and DJ Mustard are just as popular as the rappers they produce for. It has influenced the direction of many in Drake’s shadow, including Noah “40” Shebib and The Weeknd. Other artists followed, and Clams Casino rolled out a steady, if not wholly prolific string of tracks.Īs is the way, like-minded producers began to bite his sound and spin off their own forms of cloud rap. “Palace” and “Peso,” two Casino productions in late 2011, were the first mainstream successes to come out of A$AP Mob, which is now a factory of trap mega-hits. It allowed the rapper to imprint his own style, and begged others in the genre to do the same.Ī$AP Rocky was next, formalizing atmospheric beats with a more typical rap style on mixtape $AP.

On Lil B tracks like “I’m God”, where he stretches Imogen Heap’s “Just for Now” into a gorgeous, rolling beat, Clams Casino created the “based” sound for a wide audience -– a beat that can stand alone as its own piece of music, a perfect carpet for Lil B to take dusty boots to. The most prolific creator of this “cloud rap” sound was New Jersey producer Michael Volpe, better known as Clams Casino. The next direction of trap was popularized by Lil B’s music, where the kick drums and hi-hats were buried in ambience, bass and reverb.

Trap was still sprouting at this time, an offshoot of late 90’s trip hop, which was being molded and changed by west coast producers like Flying Lotus. No, when Lil B rose in 2011 with a free-associating style and simplistic, web-friendly hooks (I’m Miley Cyrus / swag), there was an ace in his pocket: a new variation of the emerging trap sound. Despite his habit of creating viral content -– cursing Kevin Durant, writing a song about crying, releasing an album called I’m Gay - if you think of him as simply an Internet sensation, you’ve undersold him.

Meme culture moves too fast for the Berkeley rapper to have risen from it “Damn, Daniel” kid isn’t around anymore for a reason. While his fame may be polarizing among rap purists, Lil B’s rise didn’t happen by accident.

Starting in August, John Gaudes will write about a new release from the previous month and spin a mix from the artist’s influences and peers.

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