"341 (Freestyle)": Lex Amor
Production: Kinsey Lloyd
Album: Government Tropicana
A watery percussion throws the listener into the song with a tempered kick and hypnotic rim shot as a gentle vocal loop, initially submerged but gradually rising to the front of the mix, builds in the background. Enter Lex. Playfully, they ad lib over the intro softening our focus to the lilt in their voice with the same cushioning as eye lids gently closing. With the familiarity and intimacy of a lullaby, Lex begins the verse with a flow that threatens to break into melody at the end of each rhyme but stopping short to deliver expertly chained images and a narrative that is as smooth as their delivery. Lex throws us back into childhood memories, mapping out their school days, what life has become since university and the pursuit of profit in a capitalist driven society. You get a sense that the song is an attempt to fall back to go forward. The freestyle down memory lane is an effort to capture a sense of self, to remember how to live again.
‘praying that this last laugh will redeem me’
It’s fitting that the song ends with black ingenuity in the face of suppression, of paper airplanes, kickabouts with no balls, gold-paved cities and a chuckle from Lex. In this empowering but gentle freestyle, Lex really gets the last laugh.