LaFlair

Last December, Virginia rapper ladé quietly released Flexico, a chest-puffing EP that revitalized a bygone era of SoundCloud. I’m talking classic plugg music: back when there were shades of Zaytoven in every beat and SpaceGhostPurrp in every verse, when Uno and Fauni were inseparable, when MadeinTYO was Ubering everywhere, and when it felt like Digital Nas had more say-so than the one who made Illmatic. ladé first caught my attention with the Flexico cover art—a hand-drawn pair of eyes that looked nearly identical to the ones on D Savage’s D Phoenix, a tentpole of that mid-to-late 2010s moment. When I pointed out that similarity online, I got a handful of replies from dudes telling me “get wit da wave or drown #klan #ftw” and “klan shi fa eternity.” All I could think was: Did he just say ‘klan shit’?

I’d come to find out that this klan is a loose collective of artists, including ladé, based in and around Virginia. Exactly two months after my tweet, I watched ladé command a stuffy ass basement in Manhattan with a mic in his hand and no shirt on his back. In true hip-hop fashion, he rocked the crowd with over a dozen dudes mobbing behind him, most of whom I presume are, well, Klan members. As the tone-setter for his compatriots, ladé has been prolifically adapting the triplet flows and bionic melismas that defined the rap he grew up on. Where plugg upstarts a decade ago tended to lean into haphazard spontaneity, ladé’s curation yields something sharper and more measured. With LaFlair, the chain-swinging, speaker-knocking full-length he’s been building toward all year, ladé makes a case for himself as a blockbuster emcee-to-be.

Take “Park Terrace,” where he comes across as cool, fastidious, and reflective in the face of grandeur. There’s tension brewing in the oscillating bells and onomatopoeic gunfire, a mafioso chill to the icy arpeggios and percussive jolts. Flexes come naturally in the lyrics, and so too do allusions to family. “Always had to put my mama first/My folks always told me keep my word,’” ladé spits earnestly. That energy is key to the album as a whole, reminding me of the sink-or-swim urgency that informed Migos’ mixtape run in the 2010s. You can envision the weight of street customs and familial expectations gradually being leveled by the pressure of new wealth and fame. “Thank God I made it alive/’Cause they tried to bend me and I ain’t break,” ladé reflects on “Jesus Piece.” His laid-back temperament distinguishes him from Migos’ in-your-face tenacity, but the hunger is the same. Even rapping with blooshot grit on “Stay Solid,” he never seems pressed to raise his voice.

So much of being a good rapper is conviction: How much you believe in what you rap, how much you can get people to believe in it, and how seamlessly that synergy is relayed. Lyrically, ladé moves in familiar territory, oftentimes leaning on trap clichés. Despite this, I never get the feeling that he’s selling a life that isn’t his own. What he lacks in clever, colorful songwriting, he makes up for in cutthroat execution. LaFlair finds rhythmic poise and melodic stability in the way his hooks and verses meld into each other, forming a continuous stream of momentum. “Against Me or With Me” is as lush as it is in part because ladé’s lullaby-like cadence never changes course. The Brent Rambo-assisted “Corner” isn’t as mystifying, but the melody from its startlingly repetitive hook is the type that burrows into your subconscious for days on end.

Even the beats on LaFlair feel plucked from a sleeker, more idyllic version of the 2010s plugg scene. The Hitec-produced “Find Her” feels like a supercharged take on UnoTheActivist’s Live.Shyne.Die, a tape marked by mutant hypnagogia. Similarly, the way producer Jimmie builds around the glossy arpeggios of “Against Me or With Me” with plush keys and a spooky synth line brings to mind Heavy Weight Champ by Thouxanbanfauni. At times, the instrumentals border on mimicry: The sound effects and drums on “Believe That” and “Had Dreams” are arranged exactly how BeatPluggz used to, and the piano flourishes of the latter song and “Jesus Piece” sound straight out of Future and Zaytoven’s Beast Mode series. That doesn’t make LaFlair any less potent, though. ladé’s ability to lock into earworms and translate his ambition is exciting. Safe to say his homies were right for popping their shit.