Blue Chips is a month-to-month rap column that highlights distinctive rising rappers. To learn earlier columns, click on right here.
By most metrics, Jay Worthy is refreshingly accessible, communicative, and punctual for a rapper of his stature. He has a whole bunch of 1000’s of month-to-month listeners on Spotify and hundreds of thousands of streams to his identify. Nonetheless, with no supervisor, common publicist, or workforce of file execs behind him, he fields interview requests personally. He’s utilized this hands-on strategy his total profession, quietly rising by the ranks of West Coast rap.
“If I used to be within the hood, I might’ve had you pull as much as [Gonzales or Enterprise Park]. If I used to be at my home, I might’ve obtained you to satisfy me on the Bel-Air Lodge,” Worthy says over the cellphone. He’s lived in Los Angeles for the reason that early 2000s, however scheduling precludes an in-person meet. The Compton parks had been virtually second houses through the decade-plus he lived within the metropolis, although the resorts are newer haunts. “I really like the Beverly Hills Lodge and the Bel-Air Lodge. Wherever that Sammy Davis Jr. or Frank Sinatra would go is a spot I wish to go.”
Worthy speaks with the identical unflappable calm and sedate cadence he brings to his usually relaxed and conversational verses, his composure probably acquired through the years of high-intensity hustles and probably deadly affiliations he reflectively recounts on albums like August’s You Take the Credit score, We’ll Take the Verify. During the last decade, he’s curated a singular pressure of West Coast road rap on EPs and LPs produced by an enviable listing of elite producers, together with Alchemist, Cardo, Budgie, Harry Fraud, D.J. Contemporary, and Sean Home, the producer half of the Worthy-fronted duo LND DRGS. Most provide their interpretation of the LND DRGS template: subdued, downtempo, and sparsely knocking beats of deep groove that pattern ’80s R&B and R&B-leaning funk from the identical period (aka “boogie”). Every instrumental is right driving music, beats that lend themselves to Worthy’s informal rapping and cruising by L.A.’s countless sprawl and everlasting summer time. Whether or not rapping alone or alongside project-length collaborators like Larry June, Curren$y, or G Perico, his songs are the soundtracks to posh dinners at his most popular L.A. resorts and post-dinner drives to accommodate events within the hood, the Mercedes convertible backlit by rainbow sherbet sunsets of deep orange and purple.
“I by no means purchased a characteristic in my life. That got here off of the respect from the streets. I by no means purchased a beat in my life,” Worthy says when requested in regards to the collaborations on his CV. He’d spent the morning earlier than our interview within the studio with DJ Muggs, the sonic wizard behind Cypress Hill’s smoke-choked psychedelic funk. “All of my relationships on this business have been natural. Both they wish to fuck with me as a result of they just like the sound and magnificence of the music, or they fuck with me as a human being… Perhaps considered one of my presents is being good with individuals.”
You Take the Credit score, We’ll Take the Verify is Worthy’s newest refinement of his participant memoirs, one other mission that confirms his curatorial experience. Backed by beats from honored New York producer Harry Fraud, Worthy affords extra direct and detailed life-style raps documenting the week-long stays at luxurious resorts, journeys in costly automobiles, and his sartorial preferences. He sometimes departs to ship clipped eulogies for associates misplaced to gang warfare and string collectively vignettes of former hustles, however Fraud’s slowed cinematic suites usually sound like they’re scoring lounge scenes in Blaxploitation flicks or footage of personal yachts drifting towards neon skies. In different phrases, even Worthy’s darkest traces have a sonic laxity. Whereas the tone and themes stay largely the identical, Worthy says he’s modified.
“Now you’re getting a extra mature perspective. I’m dwelling a special life. Am I hanging out on the park each day? Naw. Do I’m going there nonetheless? Yeah. Am I doing the identical shit I used to do? No,” he explains. “So that you’re going to listen to various things and totally different albums are going to have totally different feels and totally different themes.”
Worthy readily solutions music-related questions, however he’s grown weary of explaining his Canadian youth. He’s additionally more and more annoyed by prying journalists who can’t reconcile Worthy’s lyrics with Grimes being his step-sister, bristling at any time when the press desires him to certify his road affiliations and credentials. (His father remarried properly into Worthy’s maturity.)
“I don’t do lots of interviews and inform my complete life story like that as a result of I don’t should. I can go pull up wherever the fuck I need out right here and get love the place most may by no means,” Worthy says. “I really feel like I shouldn’t have to elucidate myself to anyone that don’t come from this life-style… Once I was developing, for those who didn’t bang, you wouldn’t get talked to. You’re a pedestrian, so that you don’t matter to us. My mentality continues to be just a little bit like that.”
That mentality started in Vancouver, the place the 36-year-old rapper grew up enjoying basketball along with his youthful brother and listening to MC Eiht and Ice Dice. By center college, he and his brother had been smoking blunts and “doing regardless of the fuck we wished.” In accordance with Worthy, his predominately Indian part of Vancouver was rife with gangs, drive-by shootings an everyday prevalence. After a number of associates died, Worthy left Canada at 17 as a matter of self-preservation.
He briefly landed in San Diego earlier than bouncing to Compton, the town he reps in his music and infrequently refers to as “Bompton” for causes apparent to anybody with a tenuous grasp of gang tradition.
“Even when I don’t obtained household within the set, I’m liked like I’ve household within the set. I’ve been over there for 20 years. Actual historical past. Stayed at individuals’s granny’s homes. I’ve been round too lengthy and been too strong and I by no means got here on no bizarre shit,” Worthy explains. “The web will like to tear you down or attempt to make you appear come what may. Don’t consider every little thing you learn. You must faucet in with the soil and are available to a few of these locations. Come to a few of these nook shops. Come to a few of these parks. Come ask about a few of these names that rang bells earlier than Instagram. We wasn’t on no motherfucking social media.”
Whereas Worthy engaged in stripe-worthy actions and numerous hustles in Compton, he fell in love with the ’80s boogie and R&B his music samples, listening to songs at block events and through Artwork Laboe’s famend oldies radio reveals. Throughout sporadic journeys again to Canada, Worthy met with fellow Vancouverite Sean Home, steadily ending the songs that will wind up on their debut as LND DRGS.
“I didn’t even actually care to leap into the rap style. I used to be at all times like, ‘I make funk.’ I wish to make this shit, however each producer I went to didn’t perceive it. I used to be simply searching for an engineer roughly to assist with these data and loop them up,” Worthy says. “[Sean] understood precisely what I wished to do and introduced it to life. It was a blessing.”
The primary LND DRGS songs appeared on SoundCloud in 2013. Additionally they popped up on the Tumblr of the late A$AP Yams, who Worthy befriended at SXSW the yr earlier than. Yams’ endorsement probably put them on the radar of A-Trak, who launched the duo’s 2015 debut, Aktive, on Idiot’s Gold Data. Worthy welcomed the leap from taking penitentiary probabilities to creating respectable from music. As he strung collectively one improved and unbiased mission (by his GDF Data) with extra revered producers and rappers, abandoning his Compton life turned his sole pursuit.
Right now, Worthy is elated that music is his full-time job. Songs from his early 2022 album with Larry June and Cardo, 2 P’z in a Pod, have hundreds of thousands of streams, numbers for his new album with Fraud proceed to rise, and tickets for his September tour of Texas are transferring. He’s additionally accomplished tasks with Dam-Funk and Roc Marciano, in addition to one with Jake One and Kokane. Worthy’s final aim is to file a correct solo album, working with musicians and producers to craft unique instrumentals that reverently increase on the rap and boogie music that has soundtracked his life. Radio hits and ubiquitous crucial acclaim have eluded him, however he’s not chasing both. He’s comfy with himself and his catalog.
“I’m nonetheless simply attempting to make it, however I’m comfy with the place I’m at. And I wish to have fun my victories, even when they’re small victories.”
