Eric Grubbs
This Fort Worth Rapper’s Anticipated Debut EP Comes Out Tomorrow, But You Can Listen To It Here With Exclusive Track-By-Track Commentary.
We’ve been very impressed by the emerging Fort Worth-based hip-hop artist UltraVioletEnvy. Raised on gospel and R&B music, he came to his own creating his own beats and taking inspiration from various hip-hop acts.
This Friday, he’s releasing his hotly-anticipated Suede EP. And our continued luck with him includes a sneak-peek of the EP’s five tracks with commentary from him and his record label on each one, a day before the whole thing is available everywhere.
So enjoy this exclusive from UVE, and remember us when he reaches wider recognition in the near future.
“Pearls”
This was the first single from Suede. It’s a bullet from the pen of budding new talent, painting a mural of young love, aspiration and class struggle in America in 2021. A crushing, but familiar boom-bap is punctuated by choppy syllables from a voice that’s already earned your trust as if you already knew him. The pitched-shifted hook and ad-lib one-two punch already feel buried in your brain.
It was the first track written and recorded for the EP. The idea was borne out of UVE’s vision of an open oyster, classically yonic imagery, with a pearl in its center. The main character focuses on the pearl as a symbol of wealth and luxury while his partner is fixated on its representation of lust and sex, “I see a K / she see a KY.”
UVE continues in the second verse to criticize the government’s role in suppressing the working class by spinning false publicity narratives, over-policing and other practices that feed into generational financial struggle, “We been waiting too long following covenants / Breaking mankind into pieces,” he observes. And then sarcastically, “We must be loving it.” His community – he concludes – does not die for love (a noble cause) but rather for unnecessary external reasons motivated almost exclusively by money.
“Love Me”
Slowing it down early on the project, this is UVE’s first – and only! – ballad. Opening with a contemplative piano part and distant vocals, it sounds like it might be a new joint from James Blake before UVE bursts in with a hook in the form of a question. It’s a query about commitment, honesty. One we’ve all asked or been asked.
In a way, this is the perfect setup for the next track. It proves our hero, our narrator, our Suede aficionado has gravitas, experience and warrants the plea to his community he’s about to offer. Love can feel impossible waters, but experience helps you navigate.
A hauntingly thin guitar solo feels as alone as the character in the song. Sometimes being alone together is better than being together alone.
“Friend”
Soulful and immediate, “Friend” opens with a warning: you know love is a drug.
Love is addictive, but rough around the edges, finds UVE. Demand is high; supply is low and he is navigating the sticky odd maze of young love with understandable gaucheness. He’s found himself unable to bend to unrealistic demands and expectations, so he proposes, maybe can you still be my friend?
We hear his doubts unravel. They echo melodically on a dancing Fender Rhodes, in a pitched voice of an unnamed narrator, the angelic voices of our Greek Chorus, and finally the Rhodes is left all alone to discover what the future holds.
“Crazy”
You have completely lost your mind. Love has wrapped its vines around you, the tentacles gripping your being, the venom is taking hold and your synapses are firing awry.
UVE cinematically captures this all-too-classic narrative. The lilting synths and light-touch organic R&B beat blend together with pitched background vocals to paint a lush dreamscape before—out of nowhere—an aggressive voice enters firing off expletives. It’s almost comical. You can imagine yourself lost in love, over the top, and you just have to laugh.
We get a Shakespeare reference, a Bible reference and an almost-drunk-sounding slurry of other hyperbole before the track steps back to a stripped-down keyboard. The camera zooms out. It was just an unhinged moment. Sleep it off and you’ll feel better in the morning.
“Toxic”
UVE closes his debut EP with his own beat. “Toxic” is his only production on the project with him at the helm and it finds him hyper-confident, excited and spitting bars at his friends, his exes, and above all himself.
The track was conceived, written and recorded in one day in June 2019 and is the anchor of the EP.
As a trap beat pecks away, punctuated by iconic 808 cowbell jabs, UVE proudly recognizes his fallibility and asks for forgiveness, but pleads with his peers, Don’t try, don’t try…to what? Don’t try to make toxic relationships succeed. Don’t sacrifice yourself for lust. Don’t fall for old tricks and find yourself back where you started.
An unexpected violin solo rushes like water from the crack in the 808s and sheds a bit of tenderness like the first saplings of spring, the sun just above the horizon or a lone firefly in the dark, dark night.