JoogSzn

Where’s Joog? It’s a layered question. In the literal sense, the producer/rapper JoogSZN currently lounges outside of a coffee shop near the Beverly Center on a Saturday evening at twilight, wearing gold-rimmed designer glasses and a Ben Davis work shirt. In about an hour, the Crenshaw District native will meet for a nearby dinner with his long-time collaborator and HitMob co-founder, RONRONTHEPRODUCER. Most customers at the upscale Japanese-Latin fusion restaurant in West Hollywood won’t be aware that the chief sonic architects of the last half-decade of Los Angeles street rap are hiding in plain sight: cerebral, bespectacled, and feasting on wagyu. In some respects, this is regular. Producers behind the boards rarely achieve the center stage notoriety of rappers. The de facto soundtrack for pistols-and-palm trees party slaps as the cultural zeitgeist darkened, and many of the best rappers of a generation were either murdered or incarcerated, “traffic music” has defined the modern Angeleno mood. A sub-genre pioneered by the HitMob (which includes Joog, RONRON, and the similarly era-defining AceTheFace, traffic music supplies an anxious West Coast glide. It’s a slinking mutation of LA noir, music for being stuck in teeth-grinding stasis surrounded by paradise. Traffic music exists in a familial bloodline with Drakeo The Ruler’s nervous music and 03 Greedo’s creep music. The ascriptions of all three capture a paranoid, violent, hydraulic funk. - Jeff Weiss