Steve 'Flash' JuonPatrick Taylor was once the man who did our deeper dives into Clams Casino albums. As P is on an extended hiatus (but always welcome back at any time) and we haven’t talked about Clams in a long time, I felt it fell to me to write about “Winter Flower.” Who is Clams though? From the name you might assume he’s a straight up G with mafia aspirations, someone who only dines on the finest of seafood and bangs the finest of women, all while rapping about laying bodies down on the pavement. If that’s what you thought based solely on his name though you’d be 100% wrong.
First of all Casino is not a rapper in any sense of the word. Suffice it to say if he’s ever spit a single bar in a freestyle or an actual verse it has not crossed my ears. The Nutley, New Jersey native is a producer who had a fairly low profile until Lil B did the “I’m God” track using one of his beats. Suddenly every rapper who was looking for something a little more unique than the standard bass and funk was giving Casino a call. His tracks would be just as appropriate in a documentary about outer space as in a hip-hop song. He’s like nobody else that you listen to.
In the United States we inch ever closer to decriminalizing marijuana at a national level. If it ever reaches the point where recreational use is fully legal in all 50 states including mine, I’m going to hit a bong or take some edibles before I listen to “Winter Flower” again. It’s not that you can’t appreciate his trippy, atmospheric, organically electronic sounds sober. They are a complete joy in any mind-state altered or otherwise. However given that this album is only 16 minutes long, I’d really like to experience some time dilation and lose myself in the moods of these tracks.
Casino might not even be thought of as a rap artist were it not for befriending the likes of A$AP Rocky, Vince Staples, Mac Miller (RIP) and so on and lacing them with tracks. In a different era you’d think of him as an ambient music producer, an experimental avant garde studio wizard, or someone who wants to completely break down the artificial walls between genres. Maybe doing a track with Lil B was a happy accident, but I’m glad it worked out that way because it added a new sound to rap and expanded the boundaries of what hip-hop could be. The only limits are the ones imposed by what you know rap music to be and what you think it should be like. Just ignore those preconceived notions and take a listen to “Emblem.” The echoing sounds might just change your life.
If “Winter Flower” is too different from your expectations of rap music or even a rap instrumental, I’m not here to tell you that I’m right and you’re wrong. In fact if you argued that it wasn’t even rap at all, I might be inclined to agree with you instead of the other way around. Clams Casino is so different that he’s practically a genre unto himself, and as tenuous as his connection to rap might be, I’m still glad he got tied into it by hook or crook so I could enjoy his “furniture music” style of production. It’s dope.