“No Juice”

The Baltimore rapper adds a G-funk twist to his pitch-altered hangout music.

I remember catching the pitch-shifted day-in-the-life raps of Baltimore’s Fastmoneyfendi in Crown Heights about a year ago and thinking he was smooth, but I never expected his sound to brush up against G-funk. The handful of Cricket-produced tracks off his new tape, And Then the Sun Came Out, have these slippery synths that remind me of when DJ Battlecat used to get busy on the Minimoog, updated with a plugg-ish blissfulness. On the third song, “No Juice” (it starts at 4:05), Fendi’s bite-sized, thought-bubble memories (like his mom getting on him for spending too much on shoes) get even dreamier once the whining synth hits in the middle.

It isn’t the most detailed storytelling, but I can imagine him just floating around his city getting into hijinks like Smokey and Craig. I’ll be throwing on this breezy hangout joint whenever I’m on the grill this summer.