American independent music in general and underground hip-hop more specifically would be a lot less interesting without Rory Allen Philip Ferreira. The Nashville-based Chicago native has released a torrent of playfully cerebral music under several pseudonyms, including Scallops Hotel; he broke out in the early 2010s rapping as Milo, then put that name to rest in 2018 in favor of R.A.P. Ferreira. He’s a skilled MC whose mellow, confident vibe helps his flow feel sturdy even when he speeds up and slows down throughout a song. His even-keeled ease also makes him sound like he’s encoding the secrets of the universe into his work, loading his cheeky verses with genuine wisdom and esoteric-seeming references. The top YouTube comment on the video for “Asiatique Black Wizard Lily Funk,” the giddy title track from an album he dropped in October, reads “rory inspired me to go to college and get a bachelors so i can understand wtf hes talking about.” I like how he rhymes “Ellingtonian renegade” with “vaporwave” on that track—it’s a tiny moment that I can savor as thoroughly as an entire song by a lesser artist.
On January 26, Ferreira drops The First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap, a resplendent full-length collaboration with Tokyo producer Fumitake Tamura. The LP emphasizes Ferreira’s loose melodic sensibilities and connects his knotty, unconventional poeticism to a constellation of historically important Black avant-garde artists, including Sun Ra and the Last Poets. Ferreira also runs a label, Ruby Yacht, that releases his own work and that of his colleagues, and he knows how vital it is to his economic health as an artist to maintain control over his music and how it’s distributed. First in Maine and now in Nashville, he’s run a brick-and-mortar shop called Soulfolks Records and Tapes, whose bottom line doubtless benefits from his position in the national underground. Given the tight relationships Ferreira has cultivated with his fans over the years, I suspect folks will visit from far and wide just to see how his tastes manifest themselves in a record store.
R.A.P. Ferreira Semiratruth and Randal Bravery open. Sun 1/28, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $22, 17+
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