Both of YUNGMORPHEUS’ most recently released singles from the Florida-born rapper’s forthcoming album From Whence It Came (out on April 28) make mention of pie a la Shade Sheist’s “Where I Wanna Be,” in which “pie” represents shareable prosperity.
As a matter of fact, a number of tracks from the 19-song LP are either titled after or allude to food. For instance, the first out-now single featuring Quevin is named “Escovitch Fish;” track 5 featuring Fly Anakin (with whom YUNGMORPHEUS will co-headline a Lex Records tour starting 5/31) is called “Cassava Bread;” and track 13 is dubbed “Creme Brûlée.”
What’s more, cheese, fish, bread, “crackers,” lemonade, shallots, potato salad, and relish all make romantic and undoubtedly deliberate lyrical appearances on the album.
YUNGMORPHEUS poeticizes a posh collage of figurative and literal food moments in a brooding tone that makes it clear From Whence It Came isn’t a cookbook or collection of recipes, but rather a radical personal policy partly fueled by what food can represent: real-life shit, good and bad, luxury and loss.
YUNGMORPHEUS’ delivery, from top to bottom of the incoming LP, is at once calm and pregnant with caustic energy, yet never anxious. In addition to grub – or, perhaps, intertwined with it – he traverses religion, sex, violence, injustice, rolling up, growing up, and never giving up, all with the sophisticated lexis and storytelling chops of a street scholar (one with a BA in Sociology from Boston College).
The second new single, “Where it Goes,” opens the album with Jimetta Rose’s Mary J-meets-Motown vocals while YUNGMORPHEUS’ sharp tongue and straight face proudly buck the skewed system.
Much like the album’s cover art depicting armored warriors plowing through battle – beheading enemies along the way – YUNGMORPHEUS leaves each beat pillaged and every point made, sometimes brutally so. That’s to say, by the time From Whence It Came wraps, there’s not much left on the table… save maybe a piece of pie.
