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In a January blog post announcing a new collaborative project with AJ Suede, Nashville-based rapper R.A.P. Ferreira signed off with this note: “I’m moving different now.”
In reality, Ferreira has spent his entire career zigging where others would zag. His various albums and mixtapes produce a sensation akin to blissfully falling down a wormhole of thought courtesy of a particularly delightful weed strain, buoyed on your fall by wormy, loopy beats and playful pop culture references.
Onstage, Ferreira cuts a fresh, circuitous path through his career each night. At Polaris Hall last Sunday, he played off the crowd like a seasoned improv comic. “Are there any land barons here tonight?” he quipped at one point. “Oil magnates? Affluent drug dealers? Just trying to figure out the demographics of the gig.” And he worked out his set list in real time, often cycling through a few tracks on his MIDI controller—hitting a button to trigger the first note or beat—before finally settling on just the right song.
That might suggest Ferreira doesn’t give a shit about his art or his shows, but any fears of indifference are quickly brushed aside once he kicks into performance mode. When a tune got rolling, he paced the stage as he rapped, lost in the psychedelic splendor of the music and tangled happily in his own lyrical webs.
“I play the greens, eat the blues,” he rapped on “begonias,” a track from his most recent mixtape. “Read the funny papers, avoid the news. It’s nothing new.” Even the song Ferreira said addressed his fraught relationship with his father married sentimentality with goofiness and pugnaciousness. That’s the sneaky power of this brilliant artist. He’ll keep you laughing to make the bitter truths he spits go down a little easier.