Murs
Love & Rockets 3:16 (The Emancipation)
Mello Music Group
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During his thirty-year career, Nicholas “Murs” Carter has pretty much done it all. As a “West LA weird Crip, born and bred fearless,” he’s been a part of nearly thirty projects, as a solo emcee and a member of various groups and partnerships. He was part of the pioneering West Coast crew The Living Legends. He was one of the pioneering artists on El-P’s Definitive Jux label during the ’00s. He’s toured the world many times over. He’s mentored many a young and up-and-coming emcee, especially those from the Southern California region.
And now…he’s calling it quits. Well, he’s retiring from recording new music. And touring (though he seems open to occasionally doing spot dates). After three decades of dedicating his life to his music, he’s re-dedicating his life to his family, particularly his wife and four kids. He’s chosen to end his musical career with the release of Love & Rockets 3:16 (The Emancipation).
Murs has seemingly been angling for his retirement for a while now, gradually disengaging himself from his career and various musical partnerships. He released multiple “final” collaborative albums with 9th Wonder, a final team-up with Atmosphere’s Slug as the duo Felt, and, earlier this year, a final EP with 3 Melancholy Gypsies, made up of longtime LA homies (and fellow Living Legends crew members) Eligh and Scarub.
Murs’ Love and Rockets series features him collaborating with a sole producer for the entirety of the project; Volume 1: The Transformation was a partnership with Ski Beatz, while Volume 2: The Declaration featured Murs working with DJ Fresh. For the last installment, he chose to partner with Jesse Shatkin.
Although on the surface it may seem odd for Murs to team up with Shatkin, a GRAMMY-nominated producer and songwriter best known for his work with Sia and other pop-skewing artists (including Rhianna, Jennifer Lopez, Lizzo, and Kelly Clarkson), there’s a certain poetry to it. Murs and Shatkin have been friends since childhood, growing up in Los Angeles together. Shatkin, working under the name Belief, has produced songs for Murs since The End Of The Beginning (2003), one of his earliest projects, and occasionally contributed tracks to other projects throughout his career. He also produced, mixed, and engineered extensively for many other underground mainstays (such as Aesop Rock, C-Rayz Walz, Wordsworth, Jean Grae, and Invincible) throughout the ’00s.
The Emancipation is pretty ambitious, even with its half-an-hour runtime. Like many of Murs’ previous projects, it goes in numerous directions, but centers on a few underlying themes. First, the centrality of his wife and kids to his life. Second, the process of finding positivity in the often-harsh environs of the Los Angeles streets. Murs navigates this subject matter with a wisdom that he’s brought to his music for three decades, while displaying the unique insight and humor that earned him a loyal following.
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And like many near the end of their respective careers, Murs devotes some time to thinking about his beginnings. On “Silver Rec League,” the project’s opening track and first single, he speaks on his origins over Shatkin’s bass heavy grooves, reminiscing about terrorizing the Mid City basketball courts during his younger years, and reflects on how he and the neighborhood have changed.
The Emancipation features a pair of dedications to Murs’ familial unit. “Enjoy” is a touching dedication to his wife, while he delves into the complex dynamics of working to support his loved ones on “F.A.M.I.L.Y.” On one level, the song is about how musicians earn a living in the streaming era; I can’t think of a more perfect demonstration of the shifting dynamic than his lines, “It's like I don't sell music now, I sell clothes / T-shirts make me more than music.” But moreover, it’s about him learning that even though he’s hustled at rapping in order to put food on the table, his family’s love is the most important thing in his life.
Murs honors earlier parts of his music career on “This Ain’t That,” paying tribute to his years on Definitive Jux as Shatkin recreates the beat to Company Flow’s “Vital Nerve.” Murs expounds upon his frustration with industry games, denigrating the meaningless politics that goes along with getting records played on the radio, as well as his lack of desire in playing a role to make himself more marketable.
“Flowers For will.i.am” is an entertaining highlight, as Murs makes the case for the importance of will.i.am (f.k.a. Will 1X) and the rest of the oft-maligned Black Eyed Peas. Eazy-E first signed the group, then known as Atban Klann, to Ruthless Records during the early 1990s. Murs expertly speaks about growing up as an outsider, trying to search for an identity as a young man and a rapper, learning to “believe in yourself even when you can’t see,” and eventually finding inspiration from a crew of “weirdoes on a gangtsa rap label.”
As mentioned earlier, much of The Emancipation deals with figuring out ways to deal with the trauma that so often goes with growing up Black on the streets of Los Angeles. Sometimes, he deals with it with humor, as with “Chopper,” where Murs vents his frustrations about the continued omnipresence of the “ghetto birds”/police helicopters in his neighborhood throughout his formative years.
“Beauty In These Streets” is more wistful, as Murs reflects on how getting into dumb shit often led him to him maturing and learning important life lessons. “OCH” (Over Certain Heights) functions as the album’s ethereal centerpiece. He encourages his fellow street denizens to dream big, like he did, and casting their light across the city. “Raised right on the corner of that crack pandemic,” he raps. “Put jets in my backpack so I could transcend it.”
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“Lightsabers and Black Forces” continues The Emancipation’s cosmic bend, as he and Chace Infinite (a.k.a. Chace Windu) fashion themselves as Jedi Knights “with a rag in the pockets,” rolling up Pico Boulevard in a lowrider, commanding respect and vanquishing evil. He ends the project with the poignant “Stylus Groove,” ruminating on the path of his career with a single 16-bar verse. He illustrates how hip-hop culture shaped him, and how he transformed his passion into a way to make a living and appeal to fans worldwide. The song’s spoken outro is a pitch-perfect final note for Murs to end his career, as he states that after achieving his dreams, he’s tired of chasing social media algorithms, deciding that he “loves the culture, not the game.”
As a longtime fan of Murs’ music, it does make me sad that he’s retiring. As The Emancipation demonstrates, he still has tread on the tire, and selfishly I’d like the guy to stick around. But I don’t begrudge him for going out on his own terms and fully committing himself to his family. Few emcees have operated at such a high level as he has throughout his career and few have given fans so many highlights. As a final statement, The Emancipation is a damn good way to go out.
Notable Tracks: “Flowers For will.i.am” | “OCH” | “Stylus Groove” | “This Ain’t That”
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