Joell Ortiz & L’Orange
Signature
MELLO
Considering how passionate both Joell Ortiz and L’Orange (real name Austin Hart) are about rapper-producer projects, it’s surprising they hadn’t linked up before their new LP Signature, a boom-bap reinterpretation of Ortiz’s 2021 LP Autograph wherein the duo lean into being anachronisms in the rap game. Of course, they‘re a perfect fit, with L’Orange’s dusty, psych-leaning beats offering the perfect playground for Ortiz to once again remind listeners that he’s one of the best pure bar-for-bar emcees working today.
L’Orange remains unflinchingly independent, even recently announcing his departure from his longtime indie-rap home, Mello Music Group, to start his own imprint. Ortiz, who’s had one of the weirdest careers in rap, was signed to Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment and formed the Slaughterhouse supergroup under Eminem’s watch with Joe Budden, Crooked I, and Royce da 5'9". It feels like entire subgenres have come and gone since then, but Ortiz has remained fiercely dedicated to the art of rapping, even while so much of the game these days feels about everything but the music itself. In this way, Joell and L’Orange are a perfect match, doggedly pursuing their own Rosebud: the perfect rap song.
With Ortiz’s abundance of flow, L’Orange is the perfect production partner. His range of beats allow for Ortiz to paint stories with a wide swath of colors, telling tales of early days on the New York streets with the narrative skills of a novelist. The intro takes a soul sample and loops it over twinkling synths and a barely discernible bass drum accent—it’s Griseldian in nature, though L’Orange relishes the chance to spruce it up with some catchy melodies. Ortiz recalls days of drinking Absolut and bumping Biggie in his headphones, while reckoning with the way simple, seemingly innocuous decisions can have lifelong impacts. He’s able to turn mundane moments into butterfly effects, while at the same time describing his NYC turf as if it’s the entire world.
Elsewhere, the duo turn up the grime factor on “OG,” with L’Orange cooking up murky synths before replacing the sludge with a moody bassline and guitars that sound like car engines. Ortiz takes us to present times, of writing sessions in the backyard, counting down the days until the removal of the pool cover signaling the shift of seasons. And yet, despite this joy, this clear mark of success, Ortiz can’t help but drift back to nights in the projects, looking through his peephole to make sure cops weren’t gearing up to bust down his door. On Signature, two of rap’s most idiosyncratic, wizardly technicians cook up a world in which lives are made or lost with the flip of a coin; it’s not fair, but hell, neither is the rap game.
