Sy ShacklefordLet’s start this review off by getting this out of the way: This album is not “Below the Heavens”, the 2007 classic debut from prolific west coast rapper Blu and beatsmith Exile which made the duo underground hip-hop fan-favorites. Blu’s released a steady stream of critically acclaimed albums, but his breakthrough will always be considered his “Illmatic”. No, this is not “Below the Heavens”. Instead, it’s something of a corollary in both title and concept. “Los Angeles” is Blu celebrating the good, the bad, and the ugly of his home city. While 2019’s “A Long Red Hot Los Angeles Summer Night” was a detailed narrative with a cinematic plot, “Los Angeles” is Blu’s love letter to the City of Angels. To drive the point home, the entire album is produced by the Weatherman himself, Evidence.
They both hit the ground running on the album intro “Live from 54th”, as Blu delivers a scattershot range of L.A. references over Evidence’s distorted lo-fi production. The latter’s productions are sample-based, but he’s skilled enough to manipulate those sounds in a variety ways. “The Land” is heavily boom-bap with Blu rapping autobiographical lyrics about life in South Central and commentary on Los Angeles’ flashy, but cosmetic elegance. That trend continues on the title-track while cementing this album as being a total California affair. Crenshaw emcee Nana provides a verse here and shows why he’s been dubbed “LA’s Next Best Storyteller”. There’s a psychedelic buzz induced by the hazy, nighttime sounds on “Three Wheel Motion”, featuring Kokane with its nods to L.A. low-riders and warnings of the city’s illicit underbelly. “L.A. Tourists” has a head-nodding beat with its well-timed snares and samples of fast cars until the beat takes a darker shift around the song’s middle as rapper M.E.D. takes the control of the mic.
Traffic samples, especially car horns, abound all throughout “L.A. Traffic”. Blu, as well as the featured artists Cashus King and Self Jupiter from Freestyle Fellowship, deliver their verses with an urgency laced with anxiety that can be understood by those who’ve ever been stuck in proverbial Los Angeles traffic. Self Jupiter stole the show, with his deep commanding voice and many stand-out bars in his verse:
“Driving like maniacs
Mel Gibson on Fairfax
Welcome to the Terror Dome
Tenor sax
I can show you how to beat a Murder
Smoking tires with Mad Max and Tina Turner”
“The Cold” uses a melancholic string and flute clarinet samples for Blu to spin a solo yarn juxtaposing his city’s hot, sunny exterior with its frigid, unfeeling interior. There’s some humor in “Hell” considering it features Christian rapper Propaganda, likening Los Angeles to perdition over bass-driven production. Propaganda caps off his verse by saying “If you ain’t from here, you an Angels fan” not just as a nod to the city’s two major league baseball teams, but also as a transition to the next track “Heaven”, featuring C.S. Armstrong’s off-key crooning. Wealth and class divisions are topics frequently touched upon by Blu throughout the album, but here he leans towards introspection. The lead single, “Wild Wild West” is primarily of the chipmunk soul stock, and lyrically references the South Central street names on the album cover and their connotations:
Evidence lends his vocals on the mournful “Wish You Were Here”, sharing mic duties as he and Blu spit elegiac raps. The piano driven “Lights At Night” is a posse cut with Domo Genesis and Navy Blue and the closer “The LA” has upbeat production to go with Blu’s double-entendres embedded in the lyrics. When Billy Joel and Randy Newman respectively released “I’ve Loved These Days” and “I Love LA”, many listeners were so taken with how catchy and melodic they were (Newman’s track, really) that they didn’t grasp the cynicism of the lyrics and the bitter criticisms of Los Angeles. Blu does the same here, only his isn’t disguised with a pop, sunny overlay. He provides unvarnished narratives about being a Los Angelino. In his previous albums, his home city has always been the supporting character, but here it steps into the spotlight, flaws and everything. Over 30 years ago, the phrase “Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel” was passed around as a coded statement of approval. For this album, the same gist applies and becomes apparent even before the end, that “Blu the rapper loves Los Angeles.”