Even if he were tragically somehow without all the silver-tongued wordplay, the stylistically liquid St. Louis rapper would have still submerged his third album in a flavor de funk and soulful composition unique even when weighed against his own prolific canon, let alone against the rest of hip-hop or neo-soul where he so freely bends without breaking. It’s been four years since NOIR. It’s been five since blkswn. But Smi hasn’t been absent. If anything he’s been more present and downright accessible than any other figure stirring about hip-hop’s upper echelon. He stamped his name on 2019 without even releasing a project. The pandemic didn’t slow him either. Feature after feature, video after video across a multitude of genre’s imaginary boundaries, Smino has emerged unparalleled in his ability to sound like no one ever has, and ultimately, like no one will ever be able to again. All the while, his sound has been affixed with ease to seemingly anyone else in music. The creative lyricism and intangible flow that once made him are now only two of the many tricks he’s able to pull from his hat throughout the course of an album nearly an hour in length. Luv 4 Rent is Smino at his very best.

 

The album is Smino never once forcing cohesion and comfortability. It’s a challenge to musical norms - a collection of widely ranging approaches to his sound - in a way that could only be represented by a modernist anti-genre crusade, and furthermore, could only be brought to life be the transcendent protagonist at its helm that has always represented brash individualism in all his aesthetics: auditory, stylistic, as an unapologetic personality. There’s a reason everyone in music wants to work with him. His wave moves in ways that we didn’t even know were possible before blkjuptr introduced us to it in 2016. Mastering his craft against a dizzying backdrop of sounds for the four years since NOIR - or throughout the two years since he dropped enigmatic online mixtape, She Already Decided, before decidedly pulling it shortly after - there seems to be nothing he can’t do alongside the very best to do it, even in a scene as particularly broad as the modern one. Albeit always in his own way, Smino can of course rap and write. But he can also sing and unexplainably, enigmatically float overtop beats so complex that only his dear friend, Monte Booker - whose own rise behind the boards has mirrored that of his Smino in the booth - can weave them into existence. Luv 4 Rent is also the Chicago producer at his best very best.

 

He’s produced Smino’s entire full-length canon, after all, so it’s no surprise to see him lord over all of Luv 4 Rent’s curiously indefinable beatmap. And just like his counterpart, even well beyond a Smino-centric field of view, Booker’s sound has branched deep into the workings of today’s most experimentally willing names. His influence - vibrantly unique, oft-signed off via distorted hits off cyber-trap synth and growling basslines that tuck in and out of subtle snare and high-hat reminiscence - is unmistakable. And even though he’s built his foundation on being downright different, Luv 4 Rent sees Booker experiment through every sonic moment with a hunger for even newer sounds. No two tracks sound the same, and yet all 15 coalesce. From his intergalactic distortions of the keystrokes on No L’s and the 80’s Miami Disc Jockey bounce of Pro Freak, to the acoustic, summertime chords of Blu Billy and the 808-ridden neon of Pudgy, Luv 4 Rent’s compositional flow beams with unpredictable dynamism and storytelling fluidity.

 

Luv 4 Rent sees Smino experiment vividly in the same way with his own mosaic of front-man deliveries. He’s always been a willing singer, bringing melody with his one-of-a-kind vocal cords and s-turned-sh Midwestern draw into the meandering diagonals of his notebook. But his new album is expressly more melodic than any collection he’s put forth into the soundscape. It’s every bit as focused on the sung elements of its makeup as it is on the lyrical tom-foolery that has always made him an intangible wordsmith whose poetry is more maze-merged 3D riddle than it is two-dimensional written word. And yet, nothing with Luv 4 Rent is lost for those that came for a creative rhyme, some swirling wordplay, and a punchline so key to the Smino sound.

 

Every track on the album boils over with all of that. But it also exudes more of Smino’s own depth. He’s deep into his bluesiest pocket, stirring influence from his church choir and Muddy Waters ridden upbringing. When he led off towards to the album with 90 Proof, which sees Smino pull an opening verse into focus that bleeds with the same blistering high-notes as its chorus before Cole does what Cole does, it was clear he was in a singing mood, without sacrificing the poeticism of it all.