Los Angeles rapper Nocando is the host of the incredibly influential trippy hip-hop night Low End Theory and founder of Hellfyre Club, a label and collective of oddball rap picking up where Freestyle Fellowship left off. On his newest release, the rapper teams up with ’80s boogie retrofitting hero Dam-Funk for “Lucid Dream,” a smoothed-out single from his upcoming album Jimmy the Burnout. Featuring Dam’s signature slowly stumbling drums, a warm bed of spacey, sexy synthesizers, and accompanied by a honeyed hook from Piatra Hawkins, “Lucid Dream” could sneak by without Nocando’s rhymes. And so, it takes a special kind of eccentric talent to stuff rhymes inside this retrolicious groove, a feat which Nocando does expertly. He shouts out Souls of Mischief’s ’93 Til’ Infinity, recalls his career’s ups and downs, rejects rap’s obnoxious molly-poppin’ and hit-chasing trends, and yearns to be more “pacifistic.”
“Lucid Dream” appears on Nocando’s Jimmy the Burnout due out March 18 on Hellfyre Club. Listen to the track below.
