With the Addition of Three New Tracks, Ron Obasi’s Reprise of 2023’s THIRTY SUNZ is a Glimpse into where he’s Heading Next
Evan Dale // February 25, 2024
Back in October, Rob Obasi dropped THIRTY SUNZ – a solar return dedication to his journey and evolution not only as an artist, but as a human being. The homage to growth and change is one that the Nashville, Tennessee lyricist has an acute understanding of. The sun – spurring growth and inspiring an understanding of self – is a throughline across much of his rapped canon. There’s something innately meditative in the way he breathes mindfulness and presence into his music and life. And THIRTY SUNZ — like so many of his projects steeped in a knack for reflection on the roads that led — is likewise an ode to presence – a reflective self portrait – to where he is now, and the past versions of himself that got him here. But Obasi is still building towards his final form, and understands he always will be. Life is fluid, and so are we. Subsequently, his music is too.
Obasi’s presence and evolution, even only a few months after the initial release, still extends to his most recent work, and THIRTY SUNZ – with the addition of three new tracks – has been reprised to reflect even more accurately where Ron Obasi is now. The original seven still stand as a prominent marker of all the places towards which he had branched over the course of a particularly prolific 2023 – having released Notes On A Scale 3 and a live-studio rendition of it prior to his October album. The reprise fills in the gaps of where he’s creatively been since, while he almost certainly cooks up something even greater and newer in the seasons to come.
P’s AND M’s(principalities and moralities), TENNWITDATITANS, and DAMNTHATSCRAZYround out the triad of new cuts that turn THIRTY SUNZ into an even more well-rounded ten-track LP. Where Ron Obasi’s gruff delivery, immersive storytelling, and self-reflective meditations are constants to his signature sound, the three additions make for a wider-reaching exhibition of the range through which he is capable of maneuvering from track to track, without losing any of the creative architecture on which he built the original version of the project.
P’s AND M’s is a slow burning meditation. Overtop an instrumentally jazz club beat, he melodically muses on the track’s title, while infusing a pair of short, offbeat, lyrically pervasive verses in the spaces in between. On TENNWITDATITANS, Obasi delvers what feels like his most signature kind of musical sweet spot of the three new cuts. A head-nodding, anthemic hook effortlessly bleeds into and out of a pair of fast-paced, poetically entrenched verses, while a melty guitar riff only brings the foundation to a higher place. With DAMNTHATSCRAZY, riding an echoey, ethereal instrumental, Obasi finds himself leaning again on a steadfast flow and addicting chorus that by way of his rasp-ridden poetics, feel innately his, and his alone.
Like everything Ron Obasi methodically creates into this world, the simple addition of three tracks to what was already a pervasively unique project, expands with purpose the way we as listeners consume his music. New risks taken, new creative directions eased into, and new successes for the THRITY SUNZ Reprise.
Happy belated, Ron.