![people going under limbo bar people going under limbo bar](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/06/18/19/299BEA4700000578-0-image-a-20_1434652498439.jpg)
I don’t want to say easy, because I don’t want it to seem like it wasn’t, you know, a lot of hard work. Vince Staples: It was very-I want to make sure I’m using the right word-it was a very seamless process. Paste: Obviously a comic requires a different approach than what you’re used to with your albums.
#PEOPLE GOING UNDER LIMBO BAR FULL#
Read our full conversation with Vince Staples about RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART and Limbo Beach below. While Staples doesn’t mind if people don’t engage with his art through a sympathetic and curious lens, it certainly helps. It’s these glimpses of his magnetic personality and savvy analyses that make his music such a rewarding listen. He wastes no time, anchored by the lifetimes’ worth of experiences and wisdom within him. You can hear each sentence open several other doors in his mind, and he always picks the one with the prize on the other side. In our conversation, Staples proves that this foray into comics is appropriate. It’s also a metaphor for not just Staples’ childhood, but also the experiences of countless other children thrust into a new world that seems to exist in the margins, complete with its own politics, rules and values. At face value, it’s your standard adventure story, anchored by camaraderie and self-discovery. Limbo Beach is a stunning visual addition to Staples’ catalog, telling the story of a wayward teenager finding himself lost on an island theme park ruled by adolescents with special abilities. Staples chose to approach his story in a more unique, accessible way in a collaboration with Z2 Comics. Staples placed Ramona Park into the hip-hop canon, and it’s applicable to countless other places. It’s a vivid and fascinating love letter to a place not normally given that consideration-documentation is a privilege not offered to all. It’s a love not tinged with guilt, but rather with an appreciation that these fragments pieced together one of the most gifted rappers of this generation. Like an amends list, Staples walks through the streets that made him and reflects on them with deep, indescribable love. Unlike his other work, there was an underlying finality to the album. It came as a surprise that less than a year after such a breathtaking release, Staples announced RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART. On “TAKE ME HOME,” he lackadaisically raps, “Keep coming back to this place ‘cause they trapped us.” It takes a trained ear to focus on his mumbled ad-lib in the background of this bar where he says “the hood.” Staples’ hardened exterior fell away to reveal a portrait of a man riddled with guilt and paranoia, struggling with the loyalty he’s had toward his home. It was calculated, concise and therapeutic. In press materials for his 2021 single “ LAW OF AVERAGES,” he says, “I feel like I’ve been trying to tell the same story.” With that, he released his self-titled album. He’s 28 now, inching farther and farther away from his past with each breath, each album, each tour. Staples is ready for a new chapter, one that he’s been carefully moving toward for the past decade. Personal anecdotes turned into a retroactive analysis, as evident in the title of his 2017 album Big Fish Theory, which references the theory that fish only grow as big as the tank they’re kept in. As his music transformed from a means of survival into a reliable and comfortable career in rap, Staples began to zoom out of his life. Staples eventually broke into a full sprint, slowly peeling back each layer to reveal another piece of his upbringing. It started with his 2014 “official” debut EP Hell Can Wait, armed with a minimalist production that’s as tense as tiptoeing in a minefield. Vince Staples has grappled with those questions for years. How do you explain violence to a child? How do you explain systemic inequality to a child who just sees another child on the other side of the rusty fence? There was beauty in the community’s resilience in spite of being abandoned by the city. Children outgrew the rusty bikes on their front steps, flowers bloomed and families came and went. Despite gang activity, murder and drugs, life went on.
#PEOPLE GOING UNDER LIMBO BAR SERIES#
It was its own insular world, separated by a series of broken fences. At all hours of the day, police officers patrolled the parking lot, watching as the people passed in and out of the blood-red apartment doors. As a child, I lived a block away from one of the most notorious housing projects in the city.