Photo by Weston Rich
Lorde Fredd33
Before we get into the new album from Milwaukee rapper Lorde Fredd33, there’s a bit of housekeeping to get out of the way, since it’s not the type of news that should be buried in the middle of an article. Fresh Cut Collective, for years the city’s most popular live rap band, is effectively finished. “I would say that Fresh Cut Collective is all but officially done now,” says Kiran Vee, who has long been the group’s de facto band leader. “I haven’t made an official announcement yet because I’ve been waiting for the right time to do it.”
As Vee tells it, the group hasn’t felt like Fresh Cut Collective for a while now, especially as its sound has evolved and band members have turned over in recent years. “When we first came out we were more of a band, then it became an actual collective, and each combination of musicians created a different sound,” Vee says. “But I’m looking around and the name Fresh Cut Collective represents so many people who aren’t in the picture anymore that it doesn’t feel right to go on using it.”
Vee is now working with a network of musicians called New Age Narcissism, which in March issued Lorde Fredd33’s 33: The Education, a short album that represents a number of fresh starts. It’s the first major release from New Age Narcissism, the first major solo statement from Lorde Fredd33 (pronounced Lord Freddy), and the first full project produced by Vee under his production moniker Q the Sun.
And nobody will mistake it for a Fresh Cut Collective album. There’s no live, funk-rock thump here. 33: The Education is an art-rap record to the core, open ended and cerebral. Vee opted for a sound that was inspired in equal parts by the widescreen aesthetic of Flying Lotus and the anything-goes mentality of Kanye West’s Yeezus.
"Yeezus just broke the door wide open; now producers draw from so many styles and influences, and there’s no longer an expectation that they follow any rules,” Vee says. “I also really looked to spiritual jazz, which has this Eastern influence with lots of drones and chanting and deep, repetitive, rhythmic stuff. My family’s from India, so I’ve been using producing as an opportunity to tap my cultural heritage, either through my beat-making approach or by literally sampling old Bollywood music, while trying to bring the most futuristic sound I can to it.”
All those layered sounds flatter Lorde Fredd33’s minimalist approach to rapping. He’s got a deep voice, somewhere between Travis Scott’s demon-dog growl and Bun B’s syrupy drawl, and his concise prose leaves that voice plenty of room to rumble. He’s not the kind of rapper who writes rhymes down; he much prefers to work by impulse.
“The whole album was basically comprised from these spurts of ideas,” Lorde Fredd33 says. “I would wake up and walk to Kiran’s house, since he lives just a block away, and sometimes I’d come up with songs on the spot. There’s one song where I made the chorus literally 50 paces from his house.
“Generally our whole process was very relaxed,” he explains. “We’d get together, joke around for a bit, drink some tea and then get to it. Spontaneity was really important to us. Our process is literally, if we don’t get it right away, it’s not going to happen. We know how it works. Kiran will start a beat and I’ll be like, ‘Hell yeah.’ But if I have to think about a verse for more than five minutes, that song isn’t happening. Then we know to move on to the next one.”
You can stream Lorde Fredd33’s 33: The Education at newagenarcissism.bandcamp.com.
