Cilvia Demo all
started in a 95 Civic. Rashad, the southern grown, west coast transplanted
rapper used to whip it in his Civic, properly named Cilvia. Maybe Cilvia Demo will inspire a future
generation of artists the way Outkast and Lil Wayne influenced Rashad. The one
thing that is for sure is that this won’t be the last solid project we hear
from the TDE newcomer.
Cilvia Demo kicks
off with an introspective look into Rashad’s psyche and the lessons he learned
from a father who didn’t know he was teaching. He sings “My daddy taught me how
to drink my pain away/ my daddy taught me how to lease somebody.” These bars
open the album to become a personal manifesto that searches various alleys of
Rashad’s mind.
Throughout the album Rashad bares his soul and shares his
weaknesses, which makes him seem stronger in the end. He uses drugs and alcohol
not as “turn-up tools,” but more as therapeutic vices that drown reality. He pursues
these escapes in Soliloquy where he rhymes “Couldn’t hit the grind but making
babies, I’m crazy/ Smoking bouquet cop it from my n*ggas pushing daises.” He
later spits about slow dancing with Jaeger and dealing with ill family members
by being “a workaholic, an alcoholic or somethin’.” Using substances to escape
is nothing new, but Rashad puts it on display and isn’t afraid of the
consequences.
Reading the pages of Rashad’s life is interesting, but it
wouldn’t be anything special without his talent. He manages to provide insight
as well as some serious bars. Pitchfork explains some lines well:
“His headspace comes through so strongly you could easily
overlook that Rashad can also put together some fucking verses. There's a single line in the title track that could sum
up why his lyrics sink in so deep—“'93
Til be cool for Emmett”—that packs the thematic merging of South and
West, racist trauma and artistic resilience, oppressive violence and expressive
freedom, all in six words. He can rattle off dense internals with
double-meaning followups (“Soliloquy”'s line “Leave the bodies on the
cul-de-sac, follow me the cult is back” opens the door for a Jim Jones
meta-reference), he's got his share of punchlines (a pistol in “Menthol” “knock
caps like it's senior year”), his hooks draw blood (“Tranquility for a Brutus/
And hard road for a Caesar”), and he mixes personal details and pop-culture
namedrops so naturally that even his Vince Vaughn and Larry David shout-outs
seem like matter-of-fact acknowledgements than celebrity punchlines.”
The lyricism throughout the album is
very strong and follows in the footsteps of more seasoned TDE members such as
Kendrick and Ab-Soul.
The album as a whole also finds an
excellent, rare balance between bragadouciouness, self counsciousness,
gangsta-esqueness, and legitimately banging beats. Rashad, of course, didn’t do
that all by himself. There are a plethora of producers (all relatively unknown)
who throw together sound production, which manages to mesh very nicely. The album
is cohesive with no tracks feeling out of place, and a lot of that credit has
to go to those producers. They provide an excellent frame for Rashad’s
pictures.
As a whole Cilvia Demo is an incredibly solid project that, so far, is my
AOTY. Fans should be excited about TDE and its future.
