Lyrics Born
Vision Board
Mobile Home Recordings
Buy via Official Store or Bandcamp | Listen Below
Tom “Lyrics Born” Shimura has had one of hip-hop’s most interesting solo careers. Over the past nearly two decades, he’s shown that he’s completely unafraid to take risks and build a kaleidoscopic view of what rap music can sound like. With Vision Board, his sixth solo album (not including his many mixtapes, live albums, and a Greatest Hits compilation), he continues to forge new paths. On one track he raps, “I’m a little off-center, but I’m still on point,” which is about as apt of a self-description that Lyrics Born has ever uttered on record.
The Bay Area-based Lyrics Born has had a busy 2022. A little over six months ago, he released his Mobile Homies: Volume 1 project. Inspired by his Mobile Homies podcast, the project was a bit looser and more free-flowing, featuring collaborations with his longtime friends, his wife Joyo Velarde, and Sitcom Dad aka actor Randall Park.
In comparison, Vision Board is a bit more structured. However, it’s also more overtly weird. Like his previous albums, Lyrics Born and producer Rob Mercurio generate a genre-bending stew, fusing elements from all types of musical styles. Mercurio, the bassist for the New Orleans-based band Galactic, has frequently collaborated with Lyrics Born, producing two of his previous albums, Real People (2015) and Quite a Life (2018). Much of the album was recorded in the Crescent City, giving the album a psychedelic energy. At nine tracks and 29 minutes, the album is often experimental, but never boring.
Much of the album’s content is concerned with LB’s interactions with the opposite sex. “Diamond Door” is his creatively lurid, innuendo-laden, but not quite explicit dedication to sexual congress. Lyrics Born goes into overdrive coming up with fantastic imagery to describe giving his woman pleasure.
“Alligator Boots,” a collaboration with vocalist Say Sway, is a bluesy, rock-infused tale of other-worldly love, as Lyrics Born describes the hallucinatory journeys of him and the object of his desire. They drink champagne and beer while walking barefoot on the moon “under an amazing chandelier hand-made from angels tears,” before getting married on a “feathered raft” officiated by the Reverend Gift of Gab.
Watch the Official Videos (Playlist):
Vision Board also has its share of tracks dedicated to Lyrics Born heralding his own dopeness. On “I’m the Best Rapper In the World,” he quickly shifts between two different extremes, from bellowing declarative shouts over pounding drums and jangling percussion, to whispering complex lines over a plucky, jazzy bassline. He exercises “talking big shit like elephant feces” on the boisterous “Go Ape Shit,” while Cut Chemist provides furious scratches. He exclaims, “Born is a beast, I'm like my own species / Unicorns be like, ‘I don't know what he is.’”
Vision Board also features some great moments of introspection. “Who’s the Best? (Dear Young LB),” is Lyrics Born’s letter to his childhood self, where he hopes to instill his younger incarnation with the confidence to make it through the awkward stages of his life. “My Favorite Ghost (Phantom Pains)” is a wistfully resigned tale of loss, as LB recalls the inspiration that he’s drawn from a former lover. Constantly haunted by her in his dreams, he tries to figure out where it went wrong. “Maybe in an alternate universe,” he muses, “I could have done everything that I wanted to do with her / But that's just a fantasy isn't it? Or is it? / It’s maddening. The ‘what if’s’ have left my heart shredded.”
The project ends with the celebratory “Greatness on Repeat (Go Me!).” LB roars his lyrics over blaring horns and thunderous drums, as if he was performing during the second line for his own funeral. “Funkiest funeral that you ever been in your life!” he thunders. “Left it better for whoever after me next in line!”
Lyrics Born has said he has a pretty ambitious release schedule for the next two years, which suggests that he’s got a few more rounds in the chamber for his audience that will hopefully be coming soon. If he continues to showcase this level of creativity, we’re all in for a treat.
Notable Tracks: “Alligator Boots” | “Greatness on Repeat” | “I’m the Best Rapper in the World” | “My Favorite Ghost”
BUY Vision Board via Lyrics Born’s Official Store | Bandcamp
LISTEN: