Jonwayne drops mixtape featuring Flying Lotus and Samiyam beats

“What’s a man supposed to say in the age of post-discovery?” Jonwayne, he of the bazooka baritone, blares on “Bus Stops,” one of the highlights of his new mixtape, “I Don’t Care.”

“Wise men are only shutting up, so let’s get ignorant,” he concludes. It’s his version of “he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” Indeed, “I Don’t Care” is a barbaric roar from the 21-year-old producer and rapper.

Part intricate internal rhyme brag raps and part introspective bloodletting, it heralds the La Habra native’s official arrival as a rapper, after ripping mikes at the Low End Theory and dropping guest spots sporadically. Earlier this year, Wayne conjured up “Bowser” for Alpha Pup, a record that Daddy Kev, the label’s honcho, hailed as his favorite release of the year.

That record consolidated the eight-bit beats of Wayne’s older stylings -- the new material is evidence of his rapid evolution. Along the way, he’s assembled a steadily growing fan base that has been waiting on the long-promised full length rap record, one rumored to be dropping soon on Stones Throw.

See such tracks as “Outsider’s Asylum,” where he bludgeons a Dibiase beat that sounds as if it were made to score a horror flick on Tattooine. He sounds almost as snarling as the M.O.P. samples that set it off. A descendent of the Revolutionary War Gen. "Mad Anthony" Wayne, Jonwayne channels his ancestry, claiming that “me and D are evil/like Stephen King’s people/trying to reach the peak of the steeple/without reaching for the needle.”

On “Experiment 17,” he and Blqbrd demolish a smoke-riddled jazz beat like a lost Lootpack record. It’s rap music for those raised on Madvillain, Edan’s “Beauty and the Beat” and with a little of the gleeful barbarianism of R.A. the Rugged Man.

Assembling beats from Low End Theory heavy hitters (Flying Lotus, Samiyam and Wayne himself), the rapper-producer incinerates everything from down-tempo jazz-inflected trip-hop to the Space Age suffocation of street bass.

On “Story One,” he paints a portrait of the artist as loner, loving video games and despising school, getting beaten by bullies five years older and refusing to snitch for fear of even more savage retribution. “Story Two” finds him painting a hallucinatory story of falling through floors and grabbing mikes. It’s rap at its most disorienting and damaging. Raw and visceral music that demonstrates exactly how much he cares.

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The Jagged Low End rap of Blu's 'NoYork!'

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ZIP: Jonwayne -- 'I Don't Care'

 -- Jeff Weiss

The jagged Low End rap of Blu's 'NoYork!' mixtape

The Low End Theory has crossed the threshold where it's as much aesthetic as brick-and-mortar blunt shelter. Sure, you can still sojourn to the Airliner every Wednesday, but its influence has bled out to all parts of the world and all shadows of the city. Witness the latest album from Blu, the San Pedro-raised rapper named Johnson Barnes, who first came to fame in 2007 via the throwback '70s Buick cruise and coming-of-age tales of "Below the Heavens."

Shortly thereafter Blu signed with Warner Bros. and has since taken a sine curve pattern as the model for his career. People close to his camp -- label affiliated and non-affiliated -- twice played me early drafts of what eventually became his latest LP, "NoYork!" It was pretty obvious that the slashing collection of songs was nowhere near commercial enough to ever see major label release. The production list included Low End Theorists Samiyam and Flying Lotus, along with assists from Madlib, and his regular collaborators Exile and Mainframe.

There was something completely commendable about Blu's recalcitrance. Rather than make a "Below the Heavens" Part 2 with R&B hooks and auto-tune, Barnes kept his advance and made psychedelic noise-rap over beats as bright and crunchy as Fruity Pebbles, yet nowhere near as sugary. Rather than release mixtapes laden with the Warner Bros. guest stars, he released jazzy lo-fi jaunts on his Bandcamp with no advance production. When I asked a source close to him why they were never released officially I was told, "Blu lost the files."

Matthewdavid and Jonwayne to hit Long Beach for Dublab gig

Despite being relatively close to L.A.'s percolating beat scene, the crates and laptops of Dublab DJs seldom seem to plant a flag on Long Beach soil in official fashion. That's about to change Saturday as the L.A. collective/radio station heads to Open, a boutique bookstore in the LBC for a daylong lineup of local bands and DJs from the collective featuring Brainfeeder artist Matthewdavid and Alpha Pup's La Habra-based young gun Jonwayne.

Presented by Long Beach event promoters Robots and Angels, the gig is a fundraiser to feed Dublab's nonprofit organization from 2 to 10 p.m. The $7 suggested donation at the door gets you a taste of sonic worlds colliding — from artsy and affectionate Long Beach bands like Feed the Feeble and Miniature Houses to boom bap beats and beard-scratching ambient rhythms of Matthewdavid and Jonwayne (whose mixtape "I Don't Care" just dropped yesterday). 

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Jonwayne fires off track from Alpha Pup debut, 'Bowser,' connects Low End Theory with Super Mario Bros.

— Nate Jackson

Photo: Jonwayne. Credit: Courtesy of Jonwayne

 

 

 

Jonwayne fires off track from Alpha Pup debut, 'Bowser,' connects Low End Theory with Super Mario Bros.

Last week, local producer Shlohmo described Jonwayne's debut as "intelligent castle music." The joke was clear, but the truth in jest even more crystalline.

Like so many of his peers who practically get their bills delivered to Lincoln Heights' Airliner, Wayne's beats draw from the "Intelligent Dance Music" of Warp Records fixtures Boards of Canada, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. Melding the smoke-scarred dizziness of IDM with faded 16-bit video-game melodies, producers such as Dibia$e and Wayne have reconfigured the soundtracks of their youth with impressive results.

The trend isn't merely local. English producers Joker ("Tron") and Ikonika ("Sahara Michael") have emerged as analogues creating synthetic 21st century symphonies for animated warfare. For this, Koji Kondo (the composer behind the Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda soundtracks) deserves as much credit as J Dilla or Richard D. James. 

With Wayne's Alpha Pup debut, "Bowser, he makes his homage obvious. Taking its title from the spike-braceleted villain of the Super Mario series, Wayne even titles a song "Mario Is Missing." The creative debt might be too on the nose for some, but there's no denying Wayne's raw gifts. A fixture at the Low End Theory before he was old enough to drink, the husky cannonball-voiced producer-rapper has been steadily earning a rep over the last two years.