Kota The Friend and Statik Selektah’s third collaborative installment, ‘Once In A Blue Moon’ is expected and familiar, and we kind of wish it wasn’t
Evan Dale | December 18, 2024
In March of 2021, Brooklyn-born and based Kota the Friend – whose additions to the rapscape since his 2018 debut, have been lyrically pervasive, emotionally laid back, and consistently prolific – linked up with legendary East Coast producer Statik Selektah – whose own mark on music is extraordinarily wide-ranging and spans eras and epochs of rappers and vocalists – for To Kill A Sunrise, which remains a decisively balanced match crafting a rare coastal classic in the era of internet collaboration. The inherent East Coast prose and poetics respectively defining each of their signature sounds was always bound to pull at the geographic heartstrings of anyone listening nostalgic for a time when place truly mattered to hip-hop.
In March of last year, they linked again for To See A Sunset, rekindling their established collaborative sound. Seemingly fond, if not outright reliant on the structure that comes with repetition, Kota’s catalogue is largely the amalgamation of series. His video-format freestyles quickly began being organized into the releases of his Lyrics To Go run, now at Volume 5, with an annual release dating back to its 2020 inception. Anything in 2018 and Everything in 2020. There was also Foto in 2018 followed by Memo in 2022, linked not only by their names, but also by their particularly story-driven stamps. And now Once In A Blue Moon, once again adjoined with Statik Selekteh, Kota the Friend is keeping alive some promise for less ambiguous, more intentional hip-hop heading into 2025.
Never a surprise when either of these especially omnipresent artists appear with a new release, something about it does hit a certain spot in our memory bank when they’re working in cahoots. Imbibing the same deceptively mellow energy masking the intentionality in their collective beats and rhymes as the first two collaborative projects, Once in a Blue Moon rings sentimental for the tempo of hip-hop’s throughline without pushing either artist’s boundaries in any noticeable fashion.
It feels reminiscent of a time when you could tell a project’s origins just by its sound, and yet it’s modern, clean, and particularly easy to digest. Sample-heavy beats inherently analogue in their instrumental aesthetic bleed of a jazzy East Coast identity, but Kota’s approachability as a lyricist make the project feel like an introductory course into how to rap like a New Yorker without hurting anyone’s feelings.
And that may feel a bit odd to a certain brand of listener brandishing a particularly sharp knowledge and appreciation for what not only makes New York hip-hop grungy and honest, but also what largely makes hip-hop honor its anti-establishment roots often highlighting the harsh realities of our world. Whether you play the project subconsciously in the background nodding along to Statik Selektah’s meditative, timeless production, or listen intently, dissecting the spoon-fed, dictionary-driven poeticism of Kota The Friend, oft-detailing the softness of fatherhood or the desire to remain musically independent, there can feel like a certain bite is missing from it all.
Kota’s never scared away anyone listening after all. His adherence to lyricism has always been about storytelling with a sharpened edge towards the emotionally positive. When it’s felt particularly coming-of-age in nature, like with Foto or Memo, that positivity has felt more like perseverance which works incredibly well when he curates solo projects. But as is the case with much of his work – like how Lyrics To Go feels like a poetic exercise for him – Once In A Blue Moon feels altogether more about the collaborative craft of keeping East Coast specificity afloat. And by that measure, Once In A blue Moon is successful. By the measure, too, that Kota The Friend releases music at a pretty unparalleled rate, the project succeeds, albeit in stasis.
Foto remains his deep-diving, honest magnum opus; his uncut albeit warm origin story. To Kill A Sunriseset the table for Kota The Friend and Statik Selektah to usher in a hard-nosed, nostalgic East Coast rebirth, hellbent on marrying the regional sound’s roots with a modern, lyrically dynamic twist. With To See A Sunset as is the case with Once In a Blue Moon, the artists have delivered an undeniably listenable installment of their joint prowess, but the food still hasn’t hit the table.
Kota The Friend is approachable for anyone yet somehow avoids feeling altogether forced or corny like so many who inhabit a similar, positively attuned wavelength end up feeling. For Kota the Friend and Statik Selektah, that knack to relate without removing themselves from their inner creative id is all about authenticity, and that is being delivered in spades from beginning to end; from Bacon Egg and Cheese to Count Your Days.
However, perhaps the truth is that somewhere in the vast swaths of music that Kota releases, or within the repetition of concept that music tends to organize itself, Once In A Blue Moon, does emerge a little too familiar. Both artists involved are capable of so much envelope-pushing artistry, and hip-hop would be better served if they stopped stuffing their sound into neat and tidy boxes.