{"id":804593,"date":"2020-02-25T14:06:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T21:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=957949"},"modified":"2020-02-25T14:06:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T21:06:51","slug":"rylo-rodriguez-is-a-rapper-remaking-rb-in-his-own-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/rylo-rodriguez-is-a-rapper-remaking-rb-in-his-own-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Rylo Rodriguez Is a Rapper Remaking R&B in His Own Image"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mariah Carey. Tamia. Ruth B. Leon Bridges\u2026 And, now, Rylo Rodriguez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the last year, in a small but substantial corner of YouTube, a Mobile, Alabama rapper has furiously sought to place himself within a lineage of R&B and soul music, despite not possessing any of the technical vocal qualities \u2014 range, diction, consistently hitting notes \u2014 that tie this disparate group of singers together.<\/p>\n

In the hands of Rodriguez, Carey\u2019s \u201cAlways Be My Baby<\/a>\u201d is re-contextualized as a tale about poverty and violence titled \u201cProject Baby.\u201d The song, from the melody to its cadence, lifts liberally from the 1996 hit. On \u201cValentines<\/a>,\u201d Rodriguez\u2019s sandpaper Southern drawl crashes against the sped-up sample chirp of Tamia\u2019s voice, courtesy of 2006\u2019s \u201cCan\u2019t Get Enough<\/a>.\u201d In January and February alone, he\u2019s added to his growing oeuvre of hood classics, stripping Bridges\u2019 \u201cThat Was Yesterday<\/a>\u201d and Ruth B.\u2019s \u201cLost Boy<\/a>\u201d for parts, and arriving at something just as interesting as its source material. Predictably, few of these songs are available on a platform like Spotify, since they\u2019re all begging for a lawsuit, instead flourishing on YouTube, where the view counts range anywhere from eight to one million.<\/p>\n

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In the world of Rodriguez, the dichotomy of successful pop hits and the smoothed-to-perfection voices that made them so popular are forced up against stories of walking on bullets, food supplied by EBT, and T-Shirts adorned with the faces of dead men. It\u2019s a place where Ruth B. sweetly sings a nursery rhyme-esque passage, \u201cMy only friend was the man in the Moon,\u201d while videos of a man pouring cough syrup into a blueberry Faygo bottle and another toting a gun flash across the screen.<\/p>\n

This would all fall apart if Rodriguez wasn\u2019t such a captivating storyteller. Blunt, brutal, and mush-mouthed, his narratives tend to focus on the small details and impenetrable references that only those in his orbit could hope to understand. On \u201cAmen,\u201d Rodriguez tells the story of a 13-year-old\u2019s descent into a life of drug dealing and death. \u201cHe had seen the opps he was 5\u20197, but tryna leave \u2019em 6 feet,\u201d goes one line, next to metaphors like \u201cDropped outta school was a must, deodorant he ain\u2019t get his Degree,\u201d each patiently revealing details about his unnamed protagonist. It\u2019s a technical display, at odds with its recognizable sample.<\/p>\n