When DJ and producer L’Orange approached Nashville producer and rapper Namir Blade about cutting a record, I doubt either of them knew that the results would be as perfect as what culminated in Imaginary Everything. As rumor has it, Namir had been keeping tabs on L’Orange for a while and even introduced himself once following a set L’Orange did at Nashville venue the Basement. However, it wasn’t until L’Orange heard Namir’s 2020 album Aphelion’s Traveling Circus that the seeds of collaboration was planted.
Imaginary Everything is a swift departure for Namir in terms of lyrical content, flow, and process. As previously mentioned, Namir is a producer as well as a dude who raps. He’s one of those guys who tends to like to have all the elements of his projects within arms reach, and keeps it in-house and DIY as much as possible. His flow tends to be smooth and highly melodic, putting him in good company with soulful rappers like Stalley, or even Anderson .Paak when the man is feeling croony. There are moments when Namir’s serenading soul tendencies surface naturally on Imaginary Everything, such as on the lovingly floral and orchestral sounding “I Can Change,” but for the most part, L’Orange’s uniquely tight and sharp-cornered beats tend to damn the progress of such sultry, streams of passionate embellishment. What this meant is that Namir had to change up his style to make this collaboration work, and by god, did he ever shift gears in style.
L’Orange is often compared to the Alchemist, as both producers have a tenacious knack for pulling samples from jazz recordings as old as the ’20s and galvanizing them in the rhythm forge of their minds to make impossibly hard-hitting beats that feel like they could literally distending the concrete slabs of an apartment unit like air filling the cavity of a balloon. This is a very rough, wild, and old school style of sample creation for beats and one that required Namir to dip back into the tomes of hip-hop history to learn how to lasso the dragons that L’Orange unleashed on him.
Namir’s flow takes on an incredibly bouncy and percussive quality on tracks like “Point to Point” and the bumping, horn funk reel of “Corner Store Scandal. His vocal style on this track shows a clear influence from ’00s heavyweights like Cam’Ron, as does the lonesome smokey-club blues-backed title-track, which features a pairing of battering flow and heaving grooves that land like they’re trying to tenderize a slab of beef hung to cool in a butcher shop window. The soapy feel of the string and biting guitar-led “Lyra” allows Namir to sift through a tense rare soul south-western vignette that is as terse as it is earnest. The haunted echos and dusty grooves of “Nihilism” permits Namir to take swings at the clay ideals in the false temple of your mind, while the bowing bayou skimming guitars of “Shotgun” allow for some explosive hooks that pepper your defenses with verbal grape-shot.
Every track on Imaginary Everything has a fresh and unique sounding character to it, as if telling an individual and self-contained tale in the annals of an anthology of sound. While there isn’t a dud on the album, there are a few tracks that feel particularly elegant in their execution, namely the urban outlaw canticle and ’90s jazz-rap, stick-and-weave of “Somebody’s Anthem,” and the low-end wallowing, psychedelic skull-cave diver “Pipe Dream” featuring L’Orange’s oft collaborator Marlowe, a track that feels oddly revelatory as it drops crushingly heavy epiphanies to a gospel scented beat.
Imaginary Everything is one of those albums that you feel more enlighten by with each listen. There is a lot of amazing nuanced stuff happening here, so much that it makes me skeptical to think that this is all L’Orange and Namir are capable of piecing together. If they drop a follow-up in six months, I will not be surprised. In the meantime, Imaginary Everything is going to give me plenty to jam on and think about as I hurtle through the coming days, weeks, months, and years.
You can stream and/or buy Imaginary Everything below via Bandcamp:
Get Imaginary Everything on vinyl and CD from Mello Music Group here.
