Vince Staples - Vince Staples

Pitchfork 73

Read Dylan Green’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(Blacksmith Recordings/Motown Records/EMI Records)
The Long Beach MC has repeatedly shunned fame – and this spectral take on his region’s G-funk, paired with conversational lyrics, deepens his outsider appeal

Vince Staples currently occupies an intriguing and almost unique space within hip-hop. He’s become successful – big enough to get an endorsement deal with Sprite, to be asked for his grooming tips by GQ magazine, and that his fourth album comes bound up with the announcement of his own Netflix show – without actually having had a major hit. His most successful album, 2017’s Big Fish Theory, briefly scraped the lower reaches of the US Top 20; his 2015 single Norf Norf went gold without making the charts.

Perhaps that’s part of his plan. In a genre usually obsessed with success and the status it brings, he’s claimed to be uninterested in either: “Don’t go diamond [sell 10m copies] and you’ll be fine,” he told an interviewer who asked about his ambitions early on in his career. “You’ll have a regular life.”

Related: From Portishead to Scarface: Vince Staples on his favourite songwriters

The Guardian 0

(Motown)
The California rapper’s most accessible album yet captures the tenderness at play within the clammy tensions of LA

American rap’s mighty financial muscle has elbowed rock to the margins and cleared space for weirder rappers to play – and get paid. Californian Vince Staples started off as an Odd Future affiliate a decade ago, when it was unclear whether the west coast collective could convert their cult popularity into lasting success. Now that Odd Future co-founder Tyler, the Creator is a Billboard chart-topper and Brit award winner, talents such as Staples, who grew up making densely futuristic music, can spy stardom up ahead. Like Tyler’s 2017 breakthrough, Flower Boy, Staples’s new album is much more personal and accessible than anything he’s put out before.

It’s less distorted than you’d expect, with warped backing vocals, jittery percussion and little scraps of melody wafting around some of Staples’ best flows yet. There’s a typical west coast tension between its mellifluous sound and nihilistic words. Are You With That? is one of the loveliest songs you could hope to hear about murdering strangers over drug money. Even better are the ruminative Lil Fade and Taking Trips’ clammy, oppressive heat – love letters to his hometown, drafted with a poison pen.