(Blacksmith Recordings/Motown Records/EMI Records)The Long Beach MC has repeatedly shunned fame – and this spectral take on his region’s G-funk, paired with conversational lyrics, deepens his outsider appeal
Vince Staples currently occupies an intriguing and almost unique space within hip-hop. He’s become successful – big enough to get an endorsement deal with Sprite, to be asked for his grooming tips by GQ magazine, and that his fourth album comes bound up with the announcement of his own
Netflix show – without actually having had a major hit. His most successful album, 2017’s Big Fish Theory, briefly scraped the lower reaches of the US Top 20; his 2015 single Norf Norf went gold without making the charts.
Perhaps that’s part of his plan. In a genre usually obsessed with success and the status it brings, he’s claimed to be uninterested in either: “Don’t go diamond [sell 10m copies] and you’ll be fine,” he told an interviewer who asked about his ambitions early on in his career. “You’ll have a regular life.”