Father reintroduces himself with ‘Young Hot Ebony 2’
THESE days, the word ‘sequel’ evokes the escalating stakes of summer blockbusters: movies that look to continue the moneymaking and storytelling of intellectual property that has come before. But while sequels exist in every art form, they’ve been particularly important to hip-hop, with rappers looking to — along with making money and telling stories — recapture lost magic or reintroduce themselves.
For rapper-producer Father and last month’s ‘Young Hot Ebony 2,’ it’s more the latter than the former.
The 31-year-old first rose to prominence in 2014 with Volume 1, a 30-minute mission statement full of shrugged-off lyrics, both sarcastic and sinister, over barebones beats that rang out like the ghosts of snap rap past. It also introduced the world to Awful Records, a collective of rappers, singers and producers that Father assembled who quickly established themselves as an off-kilter alternative in an Atlanta rap scene at its hegemonic heights.
Awful provided a launchpad for artists as diverse as rap wunderkind Playboi Carti and singer-songwriter Faye Webster, and the label even scored a partnership with RCA Records. But the crew outgrew its ragtag beginnings, spreading out of Atlanta and signing deals elsewhere. Father decamped to Los
Angeles before returning to Georgia during the pandemic.
“I’m outside the perimeter [of Atlanta] now because the city has gotten too expensive,” he says, adding with his typical deadpan: “Also, everybody’s dying.”
Now partnership is over and he’s relocated to the scene of his first come-up, Father says it was time for a ‘hard restart.’ The time was finally right for his long-planned sequel to “Young Hot Ebony.”
“What made me bring it back around now is I feel like I’m in that same position I was back then,” he says.
“I’m back on the ground floor, getting a lot of things together.”
It would be a mistake to ever call Father’s music mature, but ‘Young Hot Ebony 2’ definitely sounds like the work of an older, more experienced artist. His flows are more versatile, his beats more lopsided and his sample-digging deeper, but Father’s lyrical threats and punchlines are as explicit and toxic as ever.
“I don’t take anything seriously, no matter how serious the situation is. That might be my problem, I don’t know,” he admits.
With ‘Young Hot Ebony 2’ in the world, Father has embarked on the ‘Good Things Come to Those Who Take’ tour, which unites him with Awful OGs Archibald Slim, Ethereal and Slug Christ. This sequel to Awful’s original breakthrough sees the crew on more solid footing.
“We’re all in a good relationship with each other, better than prior, because as things got busier and major label stuff started to happen, it separated relationships,” he explains. “Everybody’s a little bit tighter even though we’re not as active with each other.”