"Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon starts As of Now by paraphrasing a meme. "OK, I'm posted at the function in the corner, and they don't even know," he raps, his helium-tinged voice scooting through a flute sample. He pauses slightly, aware that a well-placed space in a sentence can seismically shift its impact: "...what I'm 'bout to do/I ask my boo, 'Can we keep it low?'""
"Once you catch the cleverness of his comedic timing (they definitely know what he's about to do), you should run the track back and listen for the preceding adlib, pushed low in the mix like a mischievous secret: "Watch this." You can almost see the glint in his eye as he unspools the rest of his soliloquy, oscillating between bleak details of threadbare pillows on trap house floors and shoulder-brushing flexes of cross-country flights and celebrity green rooms."
"Jah-Monte's been releasing music for just over a decade, but in the dozen or so releases since 2019's Jewelry Rap, the Charlotte rapper has really hit his stride. His uniquely disarming sense of humor augments-and sometimes masks-the complexity of his taste and technical ability. In shakier hands, his output-like 2021's Navy Blue-produced Beautifully Black or his 2023 collaboration with Sadhugold, The Black Messiah -might be lumped into the glut of solid, slightly stoned underground records that disappear as soon as the needle lifts."
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon opens As of Now with a meme-paraphrased line and a helium-tinged delivery that balances humor and menace. Comedic timing and low-mixed adlibs punctuate scenes that move between threadbare trap-house details and opulent celebrity flexes. A beat switch transforms a paisley jazz loop into a pulverized breakbeat and keyboard, darkening the mood while maintaining a casual vocal approach. After more than a decade of releases and a string of strong projects since 2019, his disarming sense of humor both highlights and conceals musical and technical complexity, keeping his work distinct in the underground.
Read at Pitchfork
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