Page 163 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - Lili

HAVING ITS COMBINED JOINT
BREAKDOWN, THE SUN SHINED IN MY DIRECTION. I BROKE THROUGH
“IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD
WHEN NOTHING ELSE WAS
HAVING ITS COMBINED JOINT
BREAKING THROUGH, ON A SONG
BREAKDOWN, THE SUN SHINED IN
THAT WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.”
MY DIRECTION. I BROKE THROUGH
WHEN NOTHING ELSE WAS
“IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD
BREAKING THROUGH, ON A SONG HAVING ITS COMBINED JOINT
THAT WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.” BREAKDOWN, THE SUN SHINED IN
“IN THE MIDST OF THE WORLD MY DIRECTION. I BROKE THROUGH
HAVING ITS COMBINED JOINT WHEN NOTHING ELSE WAS
BREAKDOWN, THE SUN SHINED IN
BREAKING THROUGH, ON A SONG
MY DIRECTION. I BROKE THROUGH
THAT WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.”
WHEN NOTHING ELSE WAS BREAKING THROUGH, ON A SONG THAT WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.”
The story from then is familiar, one we’ve seen told count- less times since then. The buzzy Internet singles became the independent debut (Collection One), and the festival appearanc- es began to mount. He launched a fashion line, provocatively named “Christian Sex Club,” and signed to L.A. Reid and Charles Goldstuck’s newly-formed Hitco Entertainment. Last year’s follow-up album, Ghetto Lenny’s Love Songs, was the right refinement. His voice was still the same, unmistakable, but ev- erything around it coalesced into something sharper, no longer mired in post-Weeknd. It was a world recognizable enough for Lil Baby, A Boogie, and Meek Mill to inhabit, but accessibly post-apocalyptic.
But in retrospect, SAINt was close to being caught between generations, one of the last rap-adjacent artists to be closely indebted to online tastemakers like Pigeons & Planes and The FADER, arriving on the scene maybe half-a-beat too early to be Rap Caviar-native. The vision was powerfully vivid, maybe too vivid to be an easy playlist home-run. But then, as we all know - a 19-year-old DJ from Kazakhstan changed everything.
The premise there, though, is that the Career is rectilinear. Sometimes the trajectory rips sharply upwards, near-exponen- tial, and sometimes the slope flattens–but we are used to careers progressing roughly in lockstep with time. Single, single, project, tour, single again, and each time around the merry-go-round you rack up a few more streams. But what does it mean when a Career becomes recursive, circular?
Because for SAINt JHN, that’s what the apocalypse hath wrought: a rebirth. His reflection on that turn of fate is tinged with both acknowledgement and pride in that poetic irony: “In the midst of the world having its combined joint breakdown, the sun shined in my direction. I broke through when nothing else was breaking through, on a song that was five years old.”
My two cents, if we want to get real literary–it’s a bit fitting. The man whose vision burned so fierce it could barely exist within the realms of another’s voice, uplifted by a radical re-en- visioning of the very contours of his voice by a DJ he’d never met. Backdrop: skyscrapers crumble. “I don’t got nothing sexy and attractive to say about it,” says SAINt. “I mean, there’s a Porsche downstairs in the basement if you want to clap for that. But the truth is, I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next. I managed to still keep some silk around me when everything else was burning.” So maybe, reverse that linearity. Perhaps SAINt is so unfazed because his read is different; where some might see luck, he instead sees the long, wide curve of fate coming full-cir- cle. Hence, the preternatural calm.
is geolocation. Future and so many others mined real, revolu- tionary depth in the past decade by exploring every facet of the rise and fall from grace. There is a Future song every single step on that 2-sided staircase, for every single intermediate step from hell to heaven and back down to hell. It does not particularly ap- pear as if that cartographic exercise holds any interest to SAINt. His real achievement has always been sustaining the unsustain- able, holding eternal the moment before the first rays of sun rip into the night.
A few months before the release of Ghetto Lenny, SAINt said to Fuse that “if me and a stripper got married, you’d have to play this at our wedding reception, the whole project.” That’s about right, because SAINt’s music has always been less about duality and more about synonymity, the wedding day writ vicious. His back catalog is tightly-curated, a marbled Grecian portrayal of the Apex.
So just remember: this is where he was always headed. For the man of the hour, the imprint he has left is now indelible. “Roses” has now unmistakably become the type of hit artists chase their whole careers. A time that has redefined two gener- ations’ conception of tumult has instead been a dual affirmation for SAINt, both of the world as he perceived it and his place within it. “I didn’t need to know the world was ending to know the world was burning,” he tells me, forcefully. “They just threw the scripts away and showed us what it really looks like behind the scenes. But I’ve been feeling like this for a long time, so nothing has changed for me.”
So the only question is what lies next–what we haven’t seen yet - and SAINt has an answer for me. When I ask him whether his artistic vision has changed, the denial is vehement, telling me, “12 year old me’s intact. He’s still writing the songs. He’s driving the Porsche today.” The response is rapid and passionate before he talks himself into a laugh (“That’s crazy, I’m talking about myself in third person, don’t do that”).
But it strikes me towards the end of our conversation that
I may have a different answer. I think he reminds me of the summer, and but especially this one: an unwavering symbol of immortality, the interminable, a refusal to fade into the crispness of fall. His music, all sinister arpeggios slinking behind trium- phant horns, is serviceable as a soundtrack to the dawn but most at home in the moments before the sunset, a rhythmic accom- paniment to the sun exploding into red glow. SAINt as much as handed us the manual himself on “Borders”. “Top off, hands in the sky,” he murmurs. “Pray don’t nobody violate.” This summer might be beyond saving, but we can count on SAINt to keep the torch blazing until the next.
And after all - SAINt’s greatest and most transcendent skill
Photographed at Hotel Figueroa,
Downtown Los Angeles.
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