The second song on Cold Devil, Drakeo the Ruler’s excellent new album, is called “Flu Flamming,” its title a nod to the L.A. rapper’s vast and inscrutable vocabulary of code, slang, and shorthand. It opens with a nine-second riff without drums, where the syllables of each line are chopped finely or pushed to (and past) the end of a measure. It doesn’t sound as if it’s part of any conventional or recognizable flow. But at the 10-second mark, the drums kick in, and Drakeo plunges immediately into a pocket: “All mud in my kidneys, my plug is a Gypsy/This a fully automatic, I let my kids hold the semis.” From there, with only minor adjustments to that song’s opening run, he’s mud-walking in Christian Louboutins, coolly breaking wrists, holding heat like Luke Skywalker playing laser tag, all the while playing cat and mouse with the beat.
Despite a low national profile, rap fans around Los Angeles have been eagerly awaiting the return of Drakeo’s avant deadpan. The South Central native, who spent 2015 and ‘16 garnering a reputation as one of the city’s most magnetic—and immediately influential—new artists, was incarcerated for much of 2017, following a January raid on a home that yielded weapons he maintains weren’t his. (The raid took place one day after his son was born, and until Drakeo was freed, he was only able to meet his child through bulletproof glass during visitation hours.) Cold Devil is not only a continuation of the momentum Drakeo’s been building for more than two years now, but a step forward in form, a distillation of what makes him such a compelling stylist.
Drakeo’s adventurousness as a vocalist can at first recall West Coast legends like E-40 or Suga Free, but where those two would slip in and out of the drums to dazzle—they’re virtuosos—Drakeo will often use his voice percussively, as if creating a new rhythm track, separate from the percussion. See “Hood Trophy,” where he raps alternately against and with the drums, slowing to a laconic creep, then pushing the pace at will. Even with more familiar approaches, he transcends: on “Fool’s Gold,” Drakeo darts around in what sounds like a dream-state, his voice cutting through the din.
As a writer, Drakeo works in short, impressionistic bursts. He can be wildly funny or rattle off bone-chilling threats without breaking character. Cold Devil’s centerpiece is “Neiman & Marcus Don’t Know You,” where Drakeo’s wearing “princess cuts on my wrist like an emo bitch,” and where the most scathing insult in L.A. county is that the clerks at Neiman Marcus don’t even recognize you. Some rappers are great for their ability to mimic an inner monologue in their writing; Drakeo is able to evoke powerful emotions with the same energy and cadence that you’d use to talk to yourself, under your breath.
On previous works, like last December’s So Cold I Do ‘Em or 2016’s I Am Mr. Mosely 2, he positioned himself as a counterpoint to rap’s mainstream forces, applying his more difficult—and often more rewarding—style to industry beats. Cold Devil feels more like an important piece of an L.A. rap scene that’s become one of the country’s most vibrant. The album’s B-side sports back-to-back collaborations with 03 Greedo, the experimental rapper whose own Odyssean records have made him a cult hero in the city. (That working relationship, where Greedo’s vocals run hot to Drakeo’s icy cool, seems as if it could yield some truly stunning music.) There are also contributions from the likes of Drakeo’s brother, Ralfy the Plug, and two from Ohgeesy, from the rapidly breaking group Shoreline Mafia.
That Drakeo’s flow has already been co-opted by other rappers around L.A. is a testament to its appeal, but it’s difficult to imagine someone accurately replicating his style. His mixture of the city’s street rap traditions and its most colorful fringe elements makes for a strange, irresistible alchemy, the kind that can’t be easily decoded.
