My favorite album of early 2012 goes by the name of Plateau Vision from Philadelphia’s Lushlife. The album presents an intriguing dichotomy of flush, thick, and genre-stretching production filled in with rhymes that speak to the core of Hip Hop music and culture. In fact, several times throughout Plateau Vision, Lushlife offers listeners Hip Hop History lessons about Summer Jam, Slick Rick, the Beastie Boys, and much more. It’s a contrast that Lush notices as well, “I’ve been exploring increasingly eccentric musical territory,” he said. “Fitting my rhymes into backdrops that might seem unfamiliar or whatever. So, it felt increasingly important to ground a lot of those tracks with rhymes that, at least on the surface, seem familiar to the listener. I talk about bitches and smoking weed. But within those couplets I also talk about literature and anthropology and shit.”
For those familiar with Lushlife’s music and history, it’s pretty much par for the course. The Philly emcee and musician is just as much known for his daring musical experimentation, as he is for his deft rhyming. On Plateau Vision, Lushlife comments on his career in a way that he has not previously, examining his current existence between genres, as well as status. “Do I want to go all-in, and make avant-garde joints? Do I want to cash out and make beat reels for major label artists? I guess I struggle with those ideas,” he tells me, “and really, I’m not sure where I want to be.”
In this interview, we talked to Lushlife about his new album Plateau Vision, music as a spiritual experience, his relationship with music, and collaborating with Black Thought. Check it out.