Steve 'Flash' JuonIn the early days of Das Racist it wasn’t clear to me if Heems and Kool A.D. were playing an elaborate joke on rap fans or not. In fact if you even know of them in 2025 it’s probably because of the “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” meme, which I’m not going to bother to explain here. If you’re on TikTok you already know and if you’re not just look it up. The point is this — their music was good (really good in fact) but their approach to it couldn’t be described as serious. If anything it was META. They were trying so hard to poke fun at rap they accidentally (or perhaps purposefully) became dope rappers in the process. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
With the benefit of 15 years hindsight and the recent arrival of “LAFANDAR” I can definitively clear the issue up. I had heard enough Kool A.D. solo projects to be sure he was on the level, and I have no doubt at this point that Heems is too. Himanshu Kumar Suri is just a naturally funny guy. “I smell real good, I spray Dior on my throat/I work remote while watching Murder She Wrote/I live in a castle it float past a moat/Oh, oh you the GOAT? Tonight I’m eating curry goat.” He’s not poking fun at rap on “I’m Pretty Cool,” he’s poking fun at himself. “I’m from around the world, I’m not sure what my accent is.” He needn’t worry about it. He’s New York. He grew up in Queens and raps like it. Are you at all surprised when Brooklyn’s own Your Old Droog drops in on “Sri Lanka” for a duet? I’m certainly not.
I’m acting a little bit like this is a solo Heems project though when it’s really not. The production here is provided by Lapgan, which is an anadrome for Gaurav Napgal. I lack the familiarity with him that I do with Heems, but the two are a good fit together. He’s incredibly chameleonic and blends his style into whatever track Heems needs to fit him and his guest stars. Plural. Guest STARS. There are a lot of people on this album, not the least of which is rap legend Kool Keith on “Obi Toppin (Darling).” This song makes me wish Keith would bring in Lapgan to produce his albums instead of self-producing so much of his shit. It makes me smile to hear Heems brag at the end “Yo check me out, I got a song with Kool Keith” because it’s about as old school of a flex as you could make. If you grew up listening to him you’d be that stoked about working with him.
Heems’ bio describes him as being of Punjabi-Indian descent, while Lapgan is more ambiguously described as Indian-American. Uncultured uncouth Yankee that I am, I still know that India has a population five times the size of the United States, and saying someone is “Indian” tells you almost jack shit about their background or culture. If you say someone is “American” there’s a huge difference between being an American from New York, Alabama, North Dakota or Alaska. Therefore I want you to take what I’m about to say with the necessary grain of salt — when I say Lapgan brings his culture to songs like “Yellow Chakra” featuring Open Mike Eagle and Sir Michael Rocks, I’m talking about whatever sound a fellow American assumes incorrectly to represent all of India. It sounds like a sitar to me, but why should a sitar represent an entire continent of diverse cultures? Truly it doesn’t.
Even in admitting my own ignorance it’s still fair to call this bliss. “LAFANDAR” brings an international sound to some boom bap by-way-of-NY rap. Or perhaps… by way of Rahway, New Jersey in the case of Fatboi Sharif on “Yo Momma.” Even though I thought of Sharif as a pretty strange (but intriguing) rapper when first introduced to him, he actually sounds like a wild beast tamed by Lapgan’s soothing melody and Heems’ charm. The samples that make up the track actually remind me of the intro or outro of a black and white 1950’s TV show. See, there you go. Lapgan has MANY influences.
I’d like to influence you to listen to “LAFANDAR.” There are so many cooks in the kitchen that it can be slightly overwhelming lyrically. From Saul Williams to Quelle Chris to Abhi the Nomad to Cool Calm Pete, it’s just a never ending array of people Heems was clearly eager to collaborate with. Let me let you in on a little secret though — his enthusiasm to do so is very infectious. This brings us full circle to me thinking Das Racist was a joke at the beginning. It was clear that Kool A.D. and Heems were having fun, but that’s because they’re naturally excited about the art of rap, so that excitement spilled onto their sound and poured out of every crevice. That’s Heems x Lapgan in a nutshell. It’s fun and often funny but that’s just because Heems is charming, witty and well met by every soul he worked with.