Life After Neph

RXK Nephew and Harry Fraud shine as a duo once the topic of steak arises. On “Hunnid on the Dresser,” a highlight from their new mixtape Life After Neph, the Rochester rapper only gets one diss off before he’s distracted by a slab of sizzling meat; soon, he segues into a cooking session so intense that his wrist snaps off like Thing in the Addams Family. Life After Neph is full of the rapper’s oddball pop culture references and weirdo energy, but it also reflects his throw-everything-at-the-wall release strategy. (Check his YouTube channel: Chances are he dropped a new song today, and that it doesn’t sound much like yesterday’s). Measured subtlety was an asset on The Onederful Nephew, his June tape with DJ Rude One, but here the beats feel overly polished. Instead of offering ample grooves for Neph to settle into, the production on Life After Neph is too slippery for his signature flows to get traction.

Fraud is a versatile collaborator; he has made a career curling his samples to fit around different creative partners’ styles. At his best, Fraud’s moderate touch accentuates Neph’s booming register, keeping the beat steady under his tumbling verses. Neph sounds 12 feet tall over the eerie chorus of “How I’m Coming”; he is equally in command on the mellower “RX Instructions.” The atmospheric “Hunnid on the Dresser” is prime real estate for Neph to take a more conversational approach to the chaotic one-liners that made “American Tterroristt” a classic (who else threatens Santa with a hammer?) As he’s started to become the boss of his own life, Neph says he’s tempering the volatile Slitherman persona that drove his early output. On Life After Neph, he raps about innocuous subjects like holiday discounts and bowling over sparkly loops, easy jazz flips, and even the interpolated melody of a Tears for Fears hit.

The album’s highlight is the final track, “Top Chef Neph.” Over ’80s-style synths outfitted with 808 claps, a sweating Neph calls on his girl to help him whip up another feast of epic proportions: Tomahawk steak, a shark-filled seafood boil, and a loaded baked potato for good measure. The production kicks up the punchiness of the earlier cut “Dub 4 U”; you can feel Neph catching his stride as he fires away on matters of taste. There’s even a glimpse of his affinity for conspiracy theories: “Shut up, your food was 3D-printed.”

Although it’s fun hearing Neph, a father himself, embrace dad-coded pleasures like prowling Home Depot for a Blackstone grill, the energy level sometimes suffers with a producer as laid-back as Fraud. His sunny sample flips were a trampoline for Kamaiyah and Jay Worthy earlier this year, but richer beats on tracks like “Authority Figure” and “Gotta Eat” can weigh Neph down. Life After Neph benefits from the same focus and short tracklist DJ Rude One brought to The Onederful Nephew, but the latter had an ember at its center that’s missing here.

Still, “Top Chef Neph” ends the project on a sharp, silly high note that reveals how Neph might sustain his artistic momentum, if and when he gets tired of sharing a new song nearly every day. As he settles into new responsibilities—he released his proper debut studio album this year, the first project he recorded completely sober, and has plans for his own label—Neph is still figuring out how to translate his overflowing verve into a more benign package. It’s not a Michelin-star recipe yet, but with Fraud, Neph manages to carve out space for the outlandish barbs and hollered metaphors that bring his most eager disciples back to YouTube each morning.