Nnamdi Ogbonnaya

Live in Portland October 30, 2018 | Mississippi Studios

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya is all over the map. The Chicagoan rapper/multi-instrumentalist draws styles and genres about him like a cloak, moving from one to the next with a flourish, on a whim. His supremely weird 2013 debut, Bootie Noir, introduced him as an incredibly technical rhymer with a penchant for hectic electronic beats in weird time signatures, an aesthetic developed through 2014’s FECKIN WEIRDO and honed to a fine point on last year’s DROOL.

With layered, rhythmic vocals echoing the musical tradition of Ogbonnaya’s Nigerian heritage, flipped schizophrenically into something decidedly American, DROOL reads somewhere between love-letter and interior monologue, incredibly self-conscious, but at the same time confident in its unique voice. “Don’t need your shit/I’ve got blueprints for clothes/I’ll survive on my own,” he sings on “HWT // nO nEeD.” “I don’t need your lip/I’ve got drool of my own/I’ll get rid of it though.” The album’s titular image signifies Ogbonnaya’s free-flowing approach to spitting rhymes, and lives wrapped up in desire, consumption, stupidity and the human condition in ways that are often surprisingly close to home.