Pink Siifu’s sound has always been that of many places and may eras charred over an open fire and chopped into something all his own – something that no one has ever really heard before. When 2018’s ensley first appeared in the SoundCloud landscape, it’s nature as a singular run-on tape that at once reminisced on a scratchy mixtape era come and gone, while inspiring the next chapter for what that mixtape era meant to hip-hop’s underbelly, was a revelation. When Negro surfaced in 2020, it bore the scars of hip-hop’s tumultuous yet fruitful explosion from its roots to its prominent present, bleeding of the anger and intensity that hip-hop’s position at the precipice of pop-culture, while Black communities still fight myriad social injustices, reckons with. Gumbo’! – Pink siifu’s 2021 album that he requested be listened to in sequence of the prior two – is a celebration – as its title would suggest – of particularly southern sounds. An old-school Southern hip-hop record for 2021. A case-study on how Southern sounds have evolved while staying rooted in the dirt. A thesis on who it is that Pink Siifu always has been and always will be as an artist: unapologetically himself – strange yet comforting like homestyle fried frog legs.

 

And yet, something that, too, speaks to his innermost id as an artist is his expansive canon of collaboration. Since his 2016 debut, Twothousandnine with Swarvy, he’s also built entire albums alongside New York rapper, Akai Solo (2019’s Black Sand), YUNGMORPHEUS (2020’s Bag Talk), and of course, his two-part tape collaboration, FlySiifu’s with Fly Anakin. For Pink Siifu, 2021 seemed to be just as much of a year of the $mokebreak as it was of the GUMBO’!. His fluidity and prowess in connecting and working with other artists – just as his ability to craft thought-provoking penmanship to the tune of something we’ve never heard before – touches hip-hop’s rawest roots. His is rap identity that like so many greats before him, is great because it’s substantially unique, yet built on the pillars of rhythm, of poetry, and of collaboration in community.

 

Throw in the fact that he debuted his album, live from a rooftop in New York City, and that shortly thereafter he embarked on a multi-city, multi-country tour, and it becomes clear that few during such trying times experienced more prosperity than the underground Alabama rapper turned global symbol of independent creative genius. And that’s what hip-hop has always been about. Pink Siifu has always been a purveyor of his own purely experimental nuance. He’s always made music that encapsulated its audience by refusing to conform in style or substance. And yet, he has – for a half-decade – managed to carve out more than a chunk – but a sizeable piece of real estate – for himself to continue pushing his own boundaries, and with them, that of hip-hop at large. For what his calendar releases alongside his spirited push for uniqueness and ubiquity within creativity at large speak towards an audience of more than hip-hop, his influence on 2021 was, if really listened to and seen, unparalleled in scope.