He’d ventured so far out that the most unexpected thing was to pivot back, and, in 2018, he channelled the buoyant music of his SoCal roots in “FM!,” a well-disguised critique of terrestrial rap radio and its function. It was followed by “Big Fish Theory,” in 2017, an even more daring turn, which pulled from house and techno music as it critiqued rap celebrity. The Def Jam album, with its clanging, steampunk aesthetics, was unlike anything else that was coming out of the historic hip-hop label, despite its being produced by familiar names such as No I.D., DJ Dahi, and Clams Casino. Since his 2015 début, “Summertime ’06,” Staples has taken greater risks, sonically and conceptually. That guardedness doesn’t extend to the curation of his projects. Most gangsta rappers aren’t exactly forthcoming in that regard, but even among his peers Staples relishes playing it close to the vest. He shifts his sound from release to release, and his struggle, as a foot soldier in the long-running California gang wars, gets clouded over by deadpan lyrics that make the particulars of his whereabouts difficult to suss out. “Don’t ever put me in a box with you rap bastards / Came from a different struggle,” he rapped on the opener for his début mixtape, “Shyne Coldchain Vol. For the past decade, the Long Beach rapper Vince Staples has been defined by his inscrutability.
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