Groovy Steppin Sh*t, Lisha G and Trini Viv’s new set of prismatic bangers, emerged from a head-scratching linkup. Whereas learning the music enterprise at Drexel College, Trini Viv began fucking with the South Carolina rapper’s sound, paid her to rap on one in every of his beats, and a few emails, weed, and studio classes later, the tape was born.
That origin story displays within the music: There’s a thrillingly out-of-place, out-of-space high quality to Groovy Steppin Sh*t. Right here you’ve acquired two completely completely different artists: In a single nook, Lisha G, who says she grew up within the “nation nation” of Camden, South Carolina, the place she first recorded in a barn, and is finest identified for hazy, red-eyed plugg in dialog with the Atlanta underground. Within the different nook, Trini Viv, a current school grad from the Philly suburbs whose zany, Pharrell-meets-Pi’erre-Bourne beats always bubble and shape-shift just like the Factor. Collectively, their sound is one-of-one—psychedelic shit-talk that sounds extra prefer it was born from alien communication than the nth Yeat album. Lisha’s blunted formalism reels Trini’s watercolor synths into her world, simply as Trini pushes Lisha out of her consolation zone. Like WiFiGawd and Tony Seltzer’s Warmth Examine, or BoofPaxkMooky and GRIMM Doza’s I’ve Been Excessive for Days, and even this yr’s J.U.S./Squadda B tape, it’s a kind of completely peculiar marriages of robust underground rapper and nerdy beatmaker that solely comes round from time to time.
As soon as a sneering firebrand within the vein of Rico Nasty, Lisha G has since settled right into a colder, extra nonchalant fashion extra much like Tony Shhnow or the late Enchanting. It’s all of the extra surgical: She sinks her tooth deeper when she casts off bars like subtweets. The attraction right here isn’t the subject material, which is usually common shit—getting excessive, getting cash, blowing up, guys blowing her telephone up—a lot as her calm supply and sneaky acrobatics. See how, on “Wanna Guess,” she revs into triplets for 2 bars earlier than sinking again right into a somber, Gucci-type pitter-patter: “The best way I’m residing… it get tough. It get robust/Ain’t no approach I’m giving up.”
