Opal by Lulamoon

As hip hop circles back to its golden age sounds, a new generation discovers the power within the smooth flows and snappy beats of boom bap, applying a wide range of new experiences to this time-tested sound. In the hands of Lulamoon on their new album Opal, boom bap beats fracture into jagged mosaics, supporting deeply personal stories of financial struggle, gender fluidity, and online community to form a striking image of hip hop to come. Free association lyricism paints focused pictures of a slice of life without falling off track into cliches, sketching these scenes from the outside in and leaving us with a full understanding and sympathy for the speaker. Intercutting blasting drum loops with glitchy mania contributes to this deconstruction, revealing the speaker as a deeply complicated, confusing entity whose many angles coalesse at a point of beautiful intersection, justifying each and every mosaic tile included.