Image via Michael Tinley
Dr. Dre’s The Chronic being listed as one of the best Bay Area rap albums is why Alan Chazaro doesn’t trust anything generated by AI.
“Alternative.” “Mellow.” Lyrical.” “Raw.” Those are a few of the bland categories on Spotify used to delineate a rapper’s sound — a generic silhouette for listeners seeking to discover their next favorite flavor via flavorless algorithm.
One thing that Spotify doesn’t have a bot-generated playlist for? “Michelin-approved rap.” That is, a gold-toothed spitter who eats at Michelin-starred establishments and makes songs and videos about their posh dining experiences. A literal Rap Caviar, but in real life.
Luckily, South Florida’s buttery emcee Blvck Svm (government name Ben Glover) is one such lyrical connoisseur. Having dropped michelinman in early November, the laid back, silky rhymer has quickly asserted himself as somewhere between post-Drakeo and post-Action Bronson – conceptually blending his love of high-end, world-class cooking with luxury raps.
The 13-song, 37-minute LP pays direct tribute to dietary sources ranging from sumac (a spice from the Middle East made from the ground berries of a sumac bush, and the appellation of more than a few renowned eateries in Catalonia, Iceland and Hong Kong) to acorns (a reference to an acorn diet that Spanish farmers use to feed livestock in order to produce Iberico pork). The album’s namesake is a clear nod to the Michelin guide, an enchiridion of fine dining recommendations dating back to 1926, when the French tire company first hired “restaurant inspectors” to anonymously rate eateries in hopes of promoting would-be travelers to hit the road. Nowadays, Michelin-starred restaurants have flourished on multiple continents and are the most coveted recognition among chefs.
Though Svm doesn’t cook inside a kitchen for a living, he does cook on a beat, having curated his own playlist titled “prime cuts” with the cover image portraying finely marbled slabs of meat. And michelinman largely lives up to that ethos. The bulk of the records omit catchy hooks and filler, instead opting for a smorgasbord of smooth, at-times overly straightforward narratives about Margiela apparel and a “mouth full of karats” (or maybe carrots?) Much like an exceptional meal, there is no wasted space, with the seasoned emcee serving up measured slices of poetic reflection alongside a healthy offering of refined, borderline-symphonic melodies.
Notably, Svm had no real experience in fine dining before deciding to make the album. He was a rapper doing his thing over jazzy, subdued instrumentals sans a penchant for pre-fixe menus. He first appeared on most radars, including mine, back in 2020 with his meditative debut single, “bleach.” The track offered a panoramic vista of oceanside relaxation, understated hustle and Svm talking over tinkling piano keys, a harp-like instrumental, and a ratcheting bassline.
The enigmatic wordsmith – who, in my memory, rarely showed his face in any of his early music releases – followed that up with a slew of singles over the next four years, including “gristle”, “fuji freestyle” and “brackish”. Today, he’s built up his subterranean following to over 900,000 monthly listeners on the aforementioned Swedish music app, with his top three songs totaling over 50 million streams combined. And yet, he remains a simple man, with not-so-simple dining pleasures.
In the Miami Vice-on-lean single “gossamer,” Svm casually alludes to a cut of “Takamori A5 with the tallow.” Good people, I worked as a full-time food journalist in San Francisco for a couple of years, and I’ve never come across such a cut of protein. The wagyu beef is graded using the Japan Meat Grading Association’s system — on a scale of A to C (a “yield grade” based on the livestock’s weight, with A being top-in-class) and one to five (a “quality grade” based on the firmness, color, texture and marbling of the cut, with five rating as the highest).
This isn’t some McAmerican Quarter Pounder burger patty. This isn’t even the best New York ribeye you’ve ever tasted on your best nights. Takamori A5 — also known as “drunken wagyu,” since the cattle are fed with a sake mash in a specific area of Japan — is a prize-winning, $209-and-up per 10 oz. slice of euphoria. And Svm devoured it (accompanied with tallow, a gelatinous cattle fat), while facetiously noting “you cannot find this shit at Sam’s.” He follows that with references to a Hungarian breed of pigs, carrying the remains of a slaveholder in his fanny pack, and clever, kitchen-friendly metaphors like “my bread started rising, the hustle the yeast.”
When thinking of food-related raps, I pride myself on documenting the ways in which rappers, particularly in the Bay, have often used food as a source of slang and income. There’s the obvious Larry June obsession with organic smoothies and oranges – not to mention his co-ownership of Honeybear Boba in Frisco. Going further back, Luniz invented the “ice cream man,” a ‘90s rap character which was later beefed over with Master P of No Limit Records. You had Shock G (RIP) bragging about getting busy in Burger King bathrooms. And if you’re talking about the pioneers of food-rap crossover, you have to mention E-40’s endlessly inventive word salads that have fed generations of rappers and fans with kitchen-based verbiage like “bread,” “gouda,” “lettuce,” “panini” and “cheddar,” along with his undisputed entrepreneurialism in the food and beverage industry (the self-anointed “Goon With The Spoon” actually sells ice cream, burritos, wine, malt liquor, tequila, Mexican cerveza, slurricane, Philly Cheese Steak-flavored sausages, lumpia and more).
Of course, you have a gang of peripheral foodies like P-Lo, who recently soundtracked a national Wingstop commercial, and Kamayiah, who’s breakout freshman mixtape A Good Night In the Ghetto featured an album cover of her delivering a bottle of Hennessy and potato chips to a group of eternally indebted homies. Food is everywhere in rap, if you take the time to look for it (earlier this year at KQED, I commissioned an artist to draw a bunch of my favorite California rappers eating the foods that they rapped about in their music.) And, of course, the aforementioned Bronson, a former chef and full-time gourmand, kicked off the modern iteration of the trend about a decade ago.
But even among the pantheon of hungry emcees to put their recipes on wax, you won’t encounter another Blvck Svm — a bon vivant who has so overtly, so intentionally, so lovingly and obsessively given himself over to the culinary arts. Fresh off his private food tour with stops that included Nonesuch in Oklahoma City, Nisei in San Francisco and Asador Bastian in Chicago, I chopped it up on a cell phone with the Southern-raised rapper-turned-gastronome about his love for the gourmet aspects of life.
At what moment did you realize michelinman — a 13-song, 37-minute love letter to fine dining — was the concept album you wanted to make?
Blvck Svm: I’ve been making music projects that have been lightly inspired by food for the past couple of years. But it didn’t become a concentrated, full-fledged, food-focused effort until last November. Went to Atelier in Chicago. It was the first tasting menu dinner I’ve ever been to. My friend Syd recommended it to me. She’s a food person plugged into the city. The chef, Christian Hunter, an up-and-coming Black chef, had just won a James Beard Award prior to me going. So I followed him on IG, told him I was pulling up, went to check it out. I was skeptical at first. I had always been skeptical about tasting menus. My whole life was built around spending a little money on a lot of food. Tasting menus are an affront to that. I’m not sure if I was cool with that. I was prepared to spend more money to eat after. But while eating, I started thinking about the flavors, how they work together, things I knew, didn’t know. The courses were nicely spaced out. I found myself more full than I expected. There was an element of being mentally satisfied and thinking about the things I was consuming. It created a sense of fullness.
Not just physical. I was feeling satisfied in every sense. It made me feel like I was good. I had never experienced that with food before. Most of the time I eat mindlessly. Not thinking about the flavors. I know what a sandwich is. Nothing pops out from the corner to surprise me when I’m eating Doritos. So I was shocked by that [at Atelier]. Towards the end of the dinner I realized I was eating my way through an album. I have loosely rapped about food in the past but I haven’t really made a project about food like that. What if I made an album, a tasting menu that people could listen to? My brain was on fire with that idea. I started taking more notes since I went to that dinner with a notepad to see how things worked. How quickly did courses come out? What were the flavors? I was very curious. That night, I decided it’s what I wanted to do. I had gotten a few beats from some of the homies who produced on the project prior to that experience and went back and revisited that. I wrote with the intention of creating a tasting menu. Each song isn’t about food, food, food, but it has that feel of a [dining] course being offered, something to be consumed.
You spent a year touring restaurants in order to write this album. Logistically, how the hell did you pull that off? Most of these spots tend to have months-long waiting lists, and it must have involved hella traveling and coordinating.
Blvck Svm: It really started with the music. I didn’t realize how much the album was going to be influenced by the food at these restaurants though. The project was mostly done when I started to travel around. I got the idea in February. I went back to the Atelier and sat at the chef’s table, and that’s when I thought about doing “Bvck Of House,” a “From The Block” style video series in the kitchen [with a hanging microphone]. So I started reaching out to all these chefs and restaurants. I typed up a proposal and outlined who I was and the idea I wanted to execute and why. To blend the fine dining space and rap music in a way that hasn’t been done before, and sharing my work with them. I shot my shot with 300, 400 chefs in my first week, just doing research. My goal was to find spots with no more than 25,000 followers. After a while my algorithm would send me more recommendations and I would follow chefs that other chefs followed. I didn’t necessarily go to each spot with the intention to sit and eat. I just wanted to shoot the videos.
What was the first restaurant you recorded at?
Blvck Svm: The first yes was at Vern’s in Charleston, so we went there first. While messaging with chef Dano Heinze on my way to Charleston, he invited us to eat there, too. Which makes sense. I got to show him what I was doing, he showed us what he was doing. Hunter, who is my manager and videographer, we’re just eating at the bar, everything on the menu. I was thinking, is this what it’s always going to be like? I wasn’t really expecting that to be the case. I thought, since it was the first time, it was an anomaly. I thought we’d get in and out and that’s it. We did the shoot in the early afternoon while they were prepping. It wasn’t too hectic because there wasn’t food service yet. But every restaurant we went to, we did that. Or we got invited to eat the night after, depending on the hours and availability.
Is there a place you still want to eat at?
Blvck Svm: Freya in Detroit was the only place we couldn’t eat at because they were completely booked. I wanna go back and try it. It’s not that far from Chicago.
Only missed one? That’s a good shooting percentage.
Blvck Svm: That’s how it worked. Planning this thing out with these chefs, we did it all weeks, if not months in advance. Early enough that they could make it happen and save us a reservation, or they would just squeeze us in during a full night if needed. It ended up being very easy. That’s a testament to how gracious the chefs and owners and staff were. For them it was like, “of course you’re eating dinner here, what do you mean?” That’s more a reflection of them. It can be difficult to get reservations at these spots, especially when they’re poppin’ and have Michelin stars. We just were able to fly in, shoot, eat, and be gone after that.
Your album samples many chefs, often from different countries, speaking poetically in many languages about their philosophies regarding food, sourcing ingredients, and the artful process of preparing a meal. Who were some of those chefs?
Blvck Svm: I didn’t meet any of the chefs from the samples. Most of them are from movies and YouTube clips. I just wanted to hear chefs [and foodmakers] talking about these things. I wanted clips of people speaking different languages. Not just people speaking with an American accent. The stuff I’m rapping about isn’t just about American food or American culture. Including fashion. There are Asian and European cultures and more mixed in. Japanese farmers might have another kind of expertise, or a Spanish chef talking about the history of a certain kind of meat. There’s also a sushi chef who talks about using the entire bluefin tuna and how they don’t want anything going to waste. I rapped about getting a bluefin tuna from a plug. There are so many parts of animals that people don’t think about using. Even people who grow up lower and middle class [in the U.S.], we aren’t thinking of eating chicken feet or pig snout. You think about chicken breast, chicken thighs. You’re not thinking about other stuff because it doesn’t have the artificial importance or prestige given to it. Even if it’s better for you. It’s all based on perception. I was trying to hammer that in, not with a metal hammer, but with one of those plastic toy hammers, as part of the album.
What’s something you learned or realized about food while doing your research for this album?
Blvck Svm: Wagyu, the marbling. What’s the fascination with having such highly marbled meat? One of the sampled clips was a Japanese wagyu farmer from part of a longer YouTube video. The scene prior to that was a Japanese wagyu auction bidding on a cow. Then it shifted to a guy on his farm and discussing how consumer tastes have shifted and what was once the prize for wagyu, super marbled A5, has shifted to meat that has lower fat. Now, cows that used to go for less money, in the A3 range, are going for higher, with slightly lower marbling. BMS [Beef Marbling Score] 5, 6. They’re more expensive than they used to be. So this album is also about accessibility, luxury, scarcity. But also critiques of that. People would buy A5 because it’s the most expensive thing. But what is happening now, the A5 is losing its prestige in the world. It’s because people are just feeling something else.
There are many ideas tied up in what makes something important and expensive. What do people want? Where does that prestige come from? It might not always be a good or bad reason. It might not have anything to do with quality, either. That’s cool. It makes you think about what’s expensive and “important” in our world. That’s a sub-theme of the project. To really assess why something is deemed valuable. What does it mean for a sturgeon fish to be worth $35,000? Why are those fishes so scarce? How does that contribute to it [costing] almost a U.S. teacher’s average salary? How does that fit economically, culturally? The movie, The Menu, also provided some quotes for the album. It’s an anti-prestige movie. And also Pig, that’s one of my favorite movies. It’s about criticizing the customers.
Pig?
Blvck Svm: Yeah. I was expecting something different when I first started to watch it. Nicolas Cage stars in it. It really goes somewhere else. It took me a couple days to process how I felt. I definitely recommend that and Menu.
What’s a dish you ate that still lingers in your mind and is referenced in the album?
Blvck Svm: The first thing that comes to mind is a palate cleanser at RGE RD in Edmonton. They served a black currant sorbet. It came in the middle of a long and meat-focused tasting menu. The spot was my favorite out of everywhere we went and everything I tasted from 12 restaurants. At RGE RD, we had just done a venison course… hold up. I actually have notes on it. [Take a moment to pull up his notes.] Ok. I like to write things down in the moment. Let me see. We ate beef croquet, an asparagus salad, wagyu tarte, braised pork belly, and “questionable bits.” It’s a duck liver mousse with morels and cognac cream sauce. I’ve had chicken and beef livers but something about duck liver and sauce? I almost named the album “questionable bits.” That’s such a cool name, especially for a dish. I’ve been thinking about that dish for a minute now. It’s something people don’t eat a lot. I’m a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
Anyways, when we got to the black currant sorbet, it was just this little scoop. And I was thinking how I could eat a whole gallon of it. The way it just cut into everything else. It was elegant. It was peaceful. There was a lot going on flavorwise in those first five courses. I love that. I hadn’t eaten that day. I was super hungry. Then everything paused with the currant sorbet. It was a respite in the middle of an amazing tasting menu. That night I went home, I hadn’t yet written the “saintlaurentarmor” track. And I realized it would be shorter than the rest of the songs, right in the middle, like a palate cleanser to mirror the black currant sorbet.
That’s dope. I love that. There’s hella connections between food and music but they’re not always on the surface.
Blvck Svm: Rapping about food can be cool because it can be cryptic. Colors, textures, temperatures, other things. You can compare it to cars, clothing, a painting, anything. There needs to be a diversity of depth in references. And not everything needs to be euphemized. It makes the cryptic stuff feel even more special. Some things just need to be named.
Is there another dish on your mind worth naming?
Blvck Svm: The hamachi collar served at REGARDS in Portland, Maine. That also inspired tracks. It was so good. Hamachi collars, butter lettuce wraps brushed with garum. I texted chef Neil after that and asked what he put in the fish sauce. He was worried I had some kind of reaction. Nah, it was just fire. He sent me a picture of the recipe. That ended up as the intro line on [“sumac”] my song with Curren$y on it. The dish was fatty and sumptuous. I think of tuna belly being close to that, but I didn’t know fish collar had that aspect to it. I’ve never eaten that. I probably would’ve never gone to Portland, Maine, if it wasn’t for this project. This is something I be nerding out about. I could talk about it for hours.
What are the connections between you as a songwriter and performer and those in the kitchen preparing these high-end foods?
Blvck Svm: Watching chefs create tasting menus. Not even just tasting menus. Just food. I realized that I need to go a lot harder as an on-stage performer. These chefs are not allowed to miss. If someone spends $250 on a 12-, 13-course dinner, none of it can be a miss. They can’t be executed poorly. It’s like you’re doing a small room performance and everyone is paying $300 to be there and everyone knows the words. You’re not allowed to fuck up. Being at Atelier, I felt that. I had a spot [at the table] where I could see everything being placed for servers and walked down to the dining area. It speaks to the preparation that goes into it all. The colors and textures, everything about every dish was all executed the same. There’s a meticulousness there that I want to unlock as a performer, but I think I’ve unlocked it as a lyricist and writer. Seeing that prep, how they worked together to create these identical, high-quality dishes.
Like, this dude working at a kitchen in Oklahoma City has probably not fucked up a dish for years. I’ve been to enough restaurants and have poked my head around enough to know that these people are not messing up at all. If they were, they wouldn’t be getting a Michelin star. People wouldn’t come back. There are no bad days. I’ve been on stage before on a perfect day. I’ve also had a performance where I felt scatterbrained and my only saving grace was that the people in the crowd didn’t know when I was fucking up. I just played it off if I missed a word. I could make a joke about it. The room for error [in fine dining] is non-existent. Especially with those price points.
In terms of music influences, where do you gain inspiration from right now? I know you allude to Drakeo the Ruler on this album, and Boldy James’ guest feature on “mikealstott” also acknowledges Drakeo.
Blvck Svm: Drakeo is one of my favorite rappers of all-time. He’s in my all-time top five, maybe even top three, personally. His creativity as a lyricist is unmatched. Lyricism in general is one of those things that people have their blinders on for and if someone doesn’t sound like they’re rapping in a dirty New York basement they’re not given credit as being a lyricist. I know I’ve never heard a rapper rap like Drakeo, but since he got big, I’ve heard a lot of rappers rap sounding like him. That means he’s a catalyst for the explosion of a sound. His presence in rap and the sound that he either created or put his own spin on, is extremely culturally significant. He’s just a crazy lyricist and that doesn’t come across sometimes because he raps with such a detached tone that you can tell he’s not trying to beat you over the head with any punchlines. For me, personally, that was the biggest influence. People will rap a dope line and be like, “get it?” That’s corny, but I used to think that kind of delivery was cool in high school. They might yell that particular line for emphasis, but all the lines can just rock and you don’t have to bring attention to it. Some stuff will go over people’s heads if you don’t overemphasize it but that’s okay. The people who are really listening will understand. Drakeo isn’t saying “look at how lyrically proficient I am.” That’s super cool. Drakeo is the first rapper I started listening to heavily that did that.
On “Flex Freestyle,” I was just starting to listen to Drakeo. I got to the later part of the song, and he said “this a see-through drum with death darts in this .50” Rappers rap about guns and shooting and killing people all the time, but it gets lost in how heavy handed it can be. Steph Curry, Kobe. It’s all the same references, same lines. And then Drakeo is referring to bullets as death darts? You can listen to rap for 10, 15 years, but you come across a line or reference and you think, has anyone ever said that? And if the answer is no, that’s the most player shit ever to me. Drakeo is one of a few artists who regularly made those kinds of references. It sounds like he doesn’t even recognize how significant that is because he’s saying it in such a “fuck you” or “fuck it” kind of way that you have to be like “wait, what did he just say?”. There’s no pageantry around it. He influenced me in that way, having that detached tone. But for different reasons. I do it to demystify prestige. Talking about a Moncler coat doesn’t mean it deserves extra enthusiasm. A lot of it doesn’t matter. Why do I sound kind of bored rapping about these different things? I’ll be rapping about caviar or getting 20 piece wings and fries. It’s gonna be the same tone. The way I talk is close to monotone. Drakeo and Valee were big on me formulating that delivery. For Drakeo it was couching those really clever lines in a shroud of indifference. It’s anti-look at me. Anti-“you get it?” type of rapping. “Front door kicker, Lu Kang is my mentor.” People rap about kicking it like Lu Kang all the time. But Lu Kang as your mentor because you kick doors down? That shit is crazy. Most rappers would dream about those lines and scream it like a battle rapper but for Drakeo it’s like, this is just a regular Wednesday for me. His influence has reached a critical mass at this point.
Since we’re on the subject, there was some uproar about Kendrick’s latest album, GNX, biting Drakeo’s sound. Any thoughts on that?
Blvck Svm: I think Kendrick drew inspiration from him on his latest album. Even part of “Not Like Us” has that Drakeo cadence. Maybe I’m incorrect in attributing that to Drakeo and not other artists before him, but when I heard certain lines I knew Kendrick was in a different bag and calling on the Ruler. Not in the whole song necessarily, but in certain flow pockets. There’s a coldness in that voice, and Kendrick lost his raspiness, that vocal thing he does. That shit is gone in those moments. I think that’s cool, and it would’ve been cool if he threw a “long live the Ruler” on there or “we know the truth” or something that lets us know a fourth wall is being broken. I used the word “Flu Flam” on “mikealstott,” that’s like a dog whistle for people to know I’m calling on Drakeo. I’ve used other Drakeo slang, “uchis,” on “gossamer.” That’s a Drakeo reference. “Mud walking in some Maisons,” that was something I borrowed in 2020 on one of my most popular streamed songs. I think that’s a way of showing love. As big as Kendrick is, that makes a difference if he acknowledges it. On my song with Boldy, I didn’t talk to him about any direction to go on that verse. He just came up with “Long live the Ruler” on his own after I sent him my verse. That was the coolest shit. I had no idea. If Kendrick had just made some type of overt reference, like rest in peace, that would’ve made a big difference. Maybe he did it in a way I didn’t understand or that I missed, but it would’ve been a cool hat tip to an influential rapper.
What new perspective have you gained about food or music that you are walking away from after having made michelinman?
Blvck Svm: Fine dining isn’t just about food. It’s about the presentation, the atmosphere, the world you create for people. If you do that, then the food doesn’t need to be anything else. Once you find that niche, people are coming back not just for the food but how the room makes them feel. Lyricists are similar. There are some chefs and lyricists who can do regular things really well in ways that have been done before but at a high level with good plating, that’s fire. A lot of places and people work like that. Or you can go out on a limb and be a little risky. There should be some quality there, but the honesty and the bravery to take that risk might compel them to try it again, or listen again, even if they don’t like the product, but they appreciate the risk that no one else is doing or has done before.
I recently ate this interesting Oreo at AnnaLena in Vancouver. It was two wafer crisps that were filled with this dungeness crab filling. It was called an Oreo. It was nuts. I’ve never had that. I’ve had crab, but not experienced that kind of ingenuity. It was really good flavorwise. But even if it was half as good, it was a fire idea. A redesigned Oreo. Even if it wasn’t as good as it actually was, that’s the experimental side that hasn’t been done before. It’s the same in music. I’m still learning how to experiment with my voice and stuff, I’m actually not very comfortable with that yet. There’s room for experimentation and tradition, but typically if the quality isn’t good it’s not really going to matter, because the shit just needs to be good. There are a lot of salmon and rice rappers out there but how many of them are you coming back to really? How many of these bare bones rappers are you listening to regularly, and why is that?
There are many ideas tied up in what makes something important and expensive. What do people want? Where does that prestige come from? It might not always be a good or bad reason. It might not have anything to do with quality, either. That’s cool. It makes you think about what’s expensive and “important” in our world. That’s a sub-theme of the project. To really assess why something is deemed valuable. What does it mean for a sturgeon fish to be worth $35,000? Why are those fishes so scarce? How does that contribute to it [costing] almost a U.S. teacher’s average salary? How does that fit economically, culturally? The movie, The Menu, also provided some quotes for the album. It’s an anti-prestige movie. And also Pig, that’s one of my favorite movies. It’s about criticizing the customers.
Pig?
Blvck Svm: Yeah. I was expecting something different when I first started to watch it. Nicolas Cage stars in it. It really goes somewhere else. It took me a couple days to process how I felt. I definitely recommend that and Menu.
What’s a dish you ate that still lingers in your mind and is referenced in the album?
Blvck Svm: The first thing that comes to mind is a palate cleanser at RGE RD in Edmonton. They served a black currant sorbet. It came in the middle of a long and meat-focused tasting menu. The spot was my favorite out of everywhere we went and everything I tasted from 12 restaurants. At RGE RD, we had just done a venison course… hold up. I actually have notes on it. [Take a moment to pull up his notes.] Ok. I like to write things down in the moment. Let me see. We ate beef croquet, an asparagus salad, wagyu tarte, braised pork belly, and “questionable bits.” It’s a duck liver mousse with morels and cognac cream sauce. I’ve had chicken and beef livers but something about duck liver and sauce? I almost named the album “questionable bits.” That’s such a cool name, especially for a dish. I’ve been thinking about that dish for a minute now. It’s something people don’t eat a lot. I’m a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
Anyways, when we got to the black currant sorbet, it was just this little scoop. And I was thinking how I could eat a whole gallon of it. The way it just cut into everything else. It was elegant. It was peaceful. There was a lot going on flavorwise in those first five courses. I love that. I hadn’t eaten that day. I was super hungry. Then everything paused with the currant sorbet. It was a respite in the middle of an amazing tasting menu. That night I went home, I hadn’t yet written the “saintlaurentarmor” track. And I realized it would be shorter than the rest of the songs, right in the middle, like a palate cleanser to mirror the black currant sorbet.
That’s dope. I love that. There’s hella connections between food and music but they’re not always on the surface.
Blvck Svm: Rapping about food can be cool because it can be cryptic. Colors, textures, temperatures, other things. You can compare it to cars, clothing, a painting, anything. There needs to be a diversity of depth in references. And not everything needs to be euphemized. It makes the cryptic stuff feel even more special. Some things just need to be named.
Is there another dish on your mind worth naming?
Blvck Svm: The hamachi collar served at REGARDS in Portland, Maine. That also inspired tracks. It was so good. Hamachi collars, butter lettuce wraps brushed with garum. I texted chef Neil after that and asked what he put in the fish sauce. He was worried I had some kind of reaction. Nah, it was just fire. He sent me a picture of the recipe. That ended up as the intro line on [“sumac”] my song with Curren$y on it. The dish was fatty and sumptuous. I think of tuna belly being close to that, but I didn’t know fish collar had that aspect to it. I’ve never eaten that. I probably would’ve never gone to Portland, Maine, if it wasn’t for this project. This is something I be nerding out about. I could talk about it for hours.
What are the connections between you as a songwriter and performer and those in the kitchen preparing these high-end foods?
Blvck Svm: Watching chefs create tasting menus. Not even just tasting menus. Just food. I realized that I need to go a lot harder as an on-stage performer. These chefs are not allowed to miss. If someone spends $250 on a 12-, 13-course dinner, none of it can be a miss. They can’t be executed poorly. It’s like you’re doing a small room performance and everyone is paying $300 to be there and everyone knows the words. You’re not allowed to fuck up. Being at Atelier, I felt that. I had a spot [at the table] where I could see everything being placed for servers and walked down to the dining area. It speaks to the preparation that goes into it all. The colors and textures, everything about every dish was all executed the same. There’s a meticulousness there that I want to unlock as a performer, but I think I’ve unlocked it as a lyricist and writer. Seeing that prep, how they worked together to create these identical, high-quality dishes.
Like, this dude working at a kitchen in Oklahoma City has probably not fucked up a dish for years. I’ve been to enough restaurants and have poked my head around enough to know that these people are not messing up at all. If they were, they wouldn’t be getting a Michelin star. People wouldn’t come back. There are no bad days. I’ve been on stage before on a perfect day. I’ve also had a performance where I felt scatterbrained and my only saving grace was that the people in the crowd didn’t know when I was fucking up. I just played it off if I missed a word. I could make a joke about it. The room for error [in fine dining] is non-existent. Especially with those price points.
In terms of music influences, where do you gain inspiration from right now? I know you allude to Drakeo the Ruler on this album, and Boldy James’ guest feature on “mikealstott” also acknowledges Drakeo.
Blvck Svm: Drakeo is one of my favorite rappers of all-time. He’s in my all-time top five, maybe even top three, personally. His creativity as a lyricist is unmatched. Lyricism in general is one of those things that people have their blinders on for and if someone doesn’t sound like they’re rapping in a dirty New York basement they’re not given credit as being a lyricist. I know I’ve never heard a rapper rap like Drakeo, but since he got big, I’ve heard a lot of rappers rap sounding like him. That means he’s a catalyst for the explosion of a sound. His presence in rap and the sound that he either created or put his own spin on, is extremely culturally significant. He’s just a crazy lyricist and that doesn’t come across sometimes because he raps with such a detached tone that you can tell he’s not trying to beat you over the head with any punchlines. For me, personally, that was the biggest influence. People will rap a dope line and be like, “get it?” That’s corny, but I used to think that kind of delivery was cool in high school. They might yell that particular line for emphasis, but all the lines can just rock and you don’t have to bring attention to it. Some stuff will go over people’s heads if you don’t overemphasize it but that’s okay. The people who are really listening will understand. Drakeo isn’t saying “look at how lyrically proficient I am.” That’s super cool. Drakeo is the first rapper I started listening to heavily that did that.
On “Flex Freestyle,” I was just starting to listen to Drakeo. I got to the later part of the song, and he said “this a see-through drum with death darts in this .50” Rappers rap about guns and shooting and killing people all the time, but it gets lost in how heavy handed it can be. Steph Curry, Kobe. It’s all the same references, same lines. And then Drakeo is referring to bullets as death darts? You can listen to rap for 10, 15 years, but you come across a line or reference and you think, has anyone ever said that? And if the answer is no, that’s the most player shit ever to me. Drakeo is one of a few artists who regularly made those kinds of references. It sounds like he doesn’t even recognize how significant that is because he’s saying it in such a “fuck you” or “fuck it” kind of way that you have to be like “wait, what did he just say?”. There’s no pageantry around it. He influenced me in that way, having that detached tone. But for different reasons. I do it to demystify prestige. Talking about a Moncler coat doesn’t mean it deserves extra enthusiasm. A lot of it doesn’t matter. Why do I sound kind of bored rapping about these different things? I’ll be rapping about caviar or getting 20 piece wings and fries. It’s gonna be the same tone. The way I talk is close to monotone. Drakeo and Valee were big on me formulating that delivery. For Drakeo it was couching those really clever lines in a shroud of indifference. It’s anti-look at me. Anti-“you get it?” type of rapping. “Front door kicker, Lu Kang is my mentor.” People rap about kicking it like Lu Kang all the time. But Lu Kang as your mentor because you kick doors down? That shit is crazy. Most rappers would dream about those lines and scream it like a battle rapper but for Drakeo it’s like, this is just a regular Wednesday for me. His influence has reached a critical mass at this point.
Since we’re on the subject, there was some uproar about Kendrick’s latest album, GNX, biting Drakeo’s sound. Any thoughts on that?
Blvck Svm: I think Kendrick drew inspiration from him on his latest album. Even part of “Not Like Us” has that Drakeo cadence. Maybe I’m incorrect in attributing that to Drakeo and not other artists before him, but when I heard certain lines I knew Kendrick was in a different bag and calling on the Ruler. Not in the whole song necessarily, but in certain flow pockets. There’s a coldness in that voice, and Kendrick lost his raspiness, that vocal thing he does. That shit is gone in those moments. I think that’s cool, and it would’ve been cool if he threw a “long live the Ruler” on there or “we know the truth” or something that lets us know a fourth wall is being broken. I used the word “Flu Flam” on “mikealstott,” that’s like a dog whistle for people to know I’m calling on Drakeo. I’ve used other Drakeo slang, “uchis,” on “gossamer.” That’s a Drakeo reference. “Mud walking in some Maisons,” that was something I borrowed in 2020 on one of my most popular streamed songs. I think that’s a way of showing love. As big as Kendrick is, that makes a difference if he acknowledges it. On my song with Boldy, I didn’t talk to him about any direction to go on that verse. He just came up with “Long live the Ruler” on his own after I sent him my verse. That was the coolest shit. I had no idea. If Kendrick had just made some type of overt reference, like rest in peace, that would’ve made a big difference. Maybe he did it in a way I didn’t understand or that I missed, but it would’ve been a cool hat tip to an influential rapper.
What new perspective have you gained about food or music that you are walking away from after having made michelinman?
Blvck Svm: Fine dining isn’t just about food. It’s about the presentation, the atmosphere, the world you create for people. If you do that, then the food doesn’t need to be anything else. Once you find that niche, people are coming back not just for the food but how the room makes them feel. Lyricists are similar. There are some chefs and lyricists who can do regular things really well in ways that have been done before but at a high level with good plating, that’s fire. A lot of places and people work like that. Or you can go out on a limb and be a little risky. There should be some quality there, but the honesty and the bravery to take that risk might compel them to try it again, or listen again, even if they don’t like the product, but they appreciate the risk that no one else is doing or has done before.
I recently ate this interesting Oreo at AnnaLena in Vancouver. It was two wafer crisps that were filled with this dungeness crab filling. It was called an Oreo. It was nuts. I’ve never had that. I’ve had crab, but not experienced that kind of ingenuity. It was really good flavorwise. But even if it was half as good, it was a fire idea. A redesigned Oreo. Even if it wasn’t as good as it actually was, that’s the experimental side that hasn’t been done before. It’s the same in music. I’m still learning how to experiment with my voice and stuff, I’m actually not very comfortable with that yet. There’s room for experimentation and tradition, but typically if the quality isn’t good it’s not really going to matter, because the shit just needs to be good. There are a lot of salmon and rice rappers out there but how many of them are you coming back to really? How many of these bare bones rappers are you listening to regularly, and why is that?
Like, this dude working at a kitchen in Oklahoma City has probably not fucked up a dish for years. I’ve been to enough restaurants and have poked my head around enough to know that these people are not messing up at all. If they were, they wouldn’t be getting a Michelin star. People wouldn’t come back. There are no bad days. I’ve been on stage before on a perfect day. I’ve also had a performance where I felt scatterbrained and my only saving grace was that the people in the crowd didn’t know when I was fucking up. I just played it off if I missed a word. I could make a joke about it. The room for error [in fine dining] is non-existent. Especially with those price points.
In terms of music influences, where do you gain inspiration from right now? I know you allude to Drakeo the Ruler on this album, and Boldy James’ guest feature on “mikealstott” also acknowledges Drakeo.
Blvck Svm: Drakeo is one of my favorite rappers of all-time. He’s in my all-time top five, maybe even top three, personally. His creativity as a lyricist is unmatched. Lyricism in general is one of those things that people have their blinders on for and if someone doesn’t sound like they’re rapping in a dirty New York basement they’re not given credit as being a lyricist. I know I’ve never heard a rapper rap like Drakeo, but since he got big, I’ve heard a lot of rappers rap sounding like him. That means he’s a catalyst for the explosion of a sound. His presence in rap and the sound that he either created or put his own spin on, is extremely culturally significant. He’s just a crazy lyricist and that doesn’t come across sometimes because he raps with such a detached tone that you can tell he’s not trying to beat you over the head with any punchlines. For me, personally, that was the biggest influence. People will rap a dope line and be like, “get it?” That’s corny, but I used to think that kind of delivery was cool in high school. They might yell that particular line for emphasis, but all the lines can just rock and you don’t have to bring attention to it. Some stuff will go over people’s heads if you don’t overemphasize it but that’s okay. The people who are really listening will understand. Drakeo isn’t saying “look at how lyrically proficient I am.” That’s super cool. Drakeo is the first rapper I started listening to heavily that did that.
On “Flex Freestyle,” I was just starting to listen to Drakeo. I got to the later part of the song, and he said “this a see-through drum with death darts in this .50” Rappers rap about guns and shooting and killing people all the time, but it gets lost in how heavy handed it can be. Steph Curry, Kobe. It’s all the same references, same lines. And then Drakeo is referring to bullets as death darts? You can listen to rap for 10, 15 years, but you come across a line or reference and you think, has anyone ever said that? And if the answer is no, that’s the most player shit ever to me. Drakeo is one of a few artists who regularly made those kinds of references. It sounds like he doesn’t even recognize how significant that is because he’s saying it in such a “fuck you” or “fuck it” kind of way that you have to be like “wait, what did he just say?”. There’s no pageantry around it. He influenced me in that way, having that detached tone. But for different reasons. I do it to demystify prestige. Talking about a Moncler coat doesn’t mean it deserves extra enthusiasm. A lot of it doesn’t matter. Why do I sound kind of bored rapping about these different things? I’ll be rapping about caviar or getting 20 piece wings and fries. It’s gonna be the same tone. The way I talk is close to monotone. Drakeo and Valee were big on me formulating that delivery. For Drakeo it was couching those really clever lines in a shroud of indifference. It’s anti-look at me. Anti-“you get it?” type of rapping. “Front door kicker, Lu Kang is my mentor.” People rap about kicking it like Lu Kang all the time. But Lu Kang as your mentor because you kick doors down? That shit is crazy. Most rappers would dream about those lines and scream it like a battle rapper but for Drakeo it’s like, this is just a regular Wednesday for me. His influence has reached a critical mass at this point.
Since we’re on the subject, there was some uproar about Kendrick’s latest album, GNX, biting Drakeo’s sound. Any thoughts on that?
Blvck Svm: I think Kendrick drew inspiration from him on his latest album. Even part of “Not Like Us” has that Drakeo cadence. Maybe I’m incorrect in attributing that to Drakeo and not other artists before him, but when I heard certain lines I knew Kendrick was in a different bag and calling on the Ruler. Not in the whole song necessarily, but in certain flow pockets. There’s a coldness in that voice, and Kendrick lost his raspiness, that vocal thing he does. That shit is gone in those moments. I think that’s cool, and it would’ve been cool if he threw a “long live the Ruler” on there or “we know the truth” or something that lets us know a fourth wall is being broken. I used the word “Flu Flam” on “mikealstott,” that’s like a dog whistle for people to know I’m calling on Drakeo. I’ve used other Drakeo slang, “uchis,” on “gossamer.” That’s a Drakeo reference. “Mud walking in some Maisons,” that was something I borrowed in 2020 on one of my most popular streamed songs. I think that’s a way of showing love. As big as Kendrick is, that makes a difference if he acknowledges it. On my song with Boldy, I didn’t talk to him about any direction to go on that verse. He just came up with “Long live the Ruler” on his own after I sent him my verse. That was the coolest shit. I had no idea. If Kendrick had just made some type of overt reference, like rest in peace, that would’ve made a big difference. Maybe he did it in a way I didn’t understand or that I missed, but it would’ve been a cool hat tip to an influential rapper.
What new perspective have you gained about food or music that you are walking away from after having made michelinman?
Blvck Svm: Fine dining isn’t just about food. It’s about the presentation, the atmosphere, the world you create for people. If you do that, then the food doesn’t need to be anything else. Once you find that niche, people are coming back not just for the food but how the room makes them feel. Lyricists are similar. There are some chefs and lyricists who can do regular things really well in ways that have been done before but at a high level with good plating, that’s fire. A lot of places and people work like that. Or you can go out on a limb and be a little risky. There should be some quality there, but the honesty and the bravery to take that risk might compel them to try it again, or listen again, even if they don’t like the product, but they appreciate the risk that no one else is doing or has done before.
I recently ate this interesting Oreo at AnnaLena in Vancouver. It was two wafer crisps that were filled with this dungeness crab filling. It was called an Oreo. It was nuts. I’ve never had that. I’ve had crab, but not experienced that kind of ingenuity. It was really good flavorwise. But even if it was half as good, it was a fire idea. A redesigned Oreo. Even if it wasn’t as good as it actually was, that’s the experimental side that hasn’t been done before. It’s the same in music. I’m still learning how to experiment with my voice and stuff, I’m actually not very comfortable with that yet. There’s room for experimentation and tradition, but typically if the quality isn’t good it’s not really going to matter, because the shit just needs to be good. There are a lot of salmon and rice rappers out there but how many of them are you coming back to really? How many of these bare bones rappers are you listening to regularly, and why is that?
I recently ate this interesting Oreo at AnnaLena in Vancouver. It was two wafer crisps that were filled with this dungeness crab filling. It was called an Oreo. It was nuts. I’ve never had that. I’ve had crab, but not experienced that kind of ingenuity. It was really good flavorwise. But even if it was half as good, it was a fire idea. A redesigned Oreo. Even if it wasn’t as good as it actually was, that’s the experimental side that hasn’t been done before. It’s the same in music. I’m still learning how to experiment with my voice and stuff, I’m actually not very comfortable with that yet. There’s room for experimentation and tradition, but typically if the quality isn’t good it’s not really going to matter, because the shit just needs to be good. There are a lot of salmon and rice rappers out there but how many of them are you coming back to really? How many of these bare bones rappers are you listening to regularly, and why is that?