It’s true: The Mario Kart Tremendous Star power-up, lengthy restricted to 10 fleeting seconds of candy-colored acceleration, has been lawfully prolonged to an hour, and we’ve got 454, a Florida-born rapper who imports gushy pluggnb from extraplanetary places—Rainbow Highway, authorities suspect—to thank. His newest tape, Casts of a Dreamer, which dropped on his SoundCloud final week, may simply as properly be peddled from the backseat of a sun-kissed convertible. There’s a top-down air to it, the fuck-it frenzy of a joyride skilled on copious quantities of caffeine, work and college teeny specks within the rearview. Contemplating its mastermind, a longtime denizen of the area between cloud rap and scorching psychedelia, it isn’t a lot a shock as a refresher—this isn’t 454’s first open-road epic, nor has he taken his foot off the fuel for the reason that final one. However rattling does terminal velocity (nonetheless) really feel good. Throw this in your automobile’s Bluetooth system and watch the “Missed name: Boss (15)” notifications pile up.
As a skateboard-clutching excessive schooler, 454 spent his screentime with one eye on Baker films and the opposite on FL Studio tutorials. In comparable style to Quick Trax 3, his breakneck 2022 opus, Casts of a Dreamer first surfaced as a single, hour-long monitor. Not all of it cracks the 100 BPM mark, although its helium-stuffed samples and skittery drum chops are indicative of a Floridian lineage. Even 454’s most downtempo songs really feel like skid marks smoldering on smoking pavement. Take “Transferring to Quick,” a glistening slow-burn during which he apologizes for, properly, transferring too quick. His cadence hilariously calls its personal bluff: He’s on his knees, wanting up at this unnamed love curiosity, gurgling like a toddler choking on snotty tears. Woman, I assumed I used to be simply transferring too quick! Woman, I assumed we was simply transferring too quick! He’s nonetheless transferring fairly quick, which is the endearing half: He can’t totally smash the brakes on his spirit, however he loves his craft deeply sufficient to strive. Even his failure feels like a cathartic overflow.
454 tries on quite a few hats on Casts of a Dreamer, which doesn’t scan as a completely conceptualized venture a lot as a free-spirited concept dump. It’s a joyride, in spite of everything, and much more infatuated with the fun of motion than the finality of arrival. Seasoned as he could also be, 454 nonetheless approaches manufacturing—his first musical love, lengthy earlier than he began spitting up-pitched soliloquies over his personal beats—with the bug-eyed holy-shit-ness of a child holding a brand-new MIDI controller on Christmas morning. That is gleefully evident on tracks just like the sample-snitching “TEMS FLIP,” initially launched earlier this 12 months as a one-off single. Title however, it oozes with the pleasure of getting pulled this off: the Nigerian megastar’s vocal runs, initially solid in a weak Future smash, repurposed for an ethereal ode to PS2s and instantaneous ramen. You’ll be able to virtually see 454 leaping up from his laptop computer, overhead headphones proffered in an outstretched palm.
Monitoring 454’s development is thrilling not solely due to his frenzied pastel music, however possibly much more due to its contagious, let’s-have-fun ardor. The rapper-producer archetype implies a determined urge to see one’s imaginative and prescient by: No time to attend for placements, one may assume, when I’ve my very own story, and my very own technique of telling it. 454, skater by day and musician by evening, appears intent on shirking indie-rap insularity, as if dragging his rig—laptop computer, audio system, mic, Focusrite, MIDI—out the entrance door, wires trailing. As he runs off into the sundown, Doppler-effected plugg blaring by his system, the neighbors are most likely shaking their heads, smiling. You don’t should match his excessive velocity to match his excessive spirits.