Offwhyte is one of the founding members of Galapagos4, the record label most notable for releasing music from Chicago acts like Typical Cats, Hellsent, and Asphate. He’s also a talented emcee, who’s last album, Dialogue, came out two years ago. Now he comes back with his latest effort, Both Sides of the Mississippi.

Dialogue was Offwhyte’s Los Angeles album, his exploration of what the city meant to him after living there for ten years. When it came time to release his next album, Offwhyte decided it was time to flip the lens around and look at our country as a whole. He was born in Alabama, spent time in Chicago, lives in L.A., and has traveled around the rest of the country, and wanted to reflect on what makes this country the way it is. It’s like his Travels With Charley album, just observing what makes each part of the U.S. unique. Working with St. Louis producer Arkimedez, this isn’t about trying to make a song for each of the fifty states or trying to make each song obviously wink with a sample to indicate a region. Instead, it’s an album with really great laid back beats with some beautiful jazz flourishes and really crisp drums, stuff you can really vibe to. Just put it on and start nodding and get lost in Offwhyte’s lyricism. Offwhyte doesn’t have the biggest voice, but he does an infectious flow, with an ear for rhythmic patterns and a knack for wordplay. From there, it’s like this album unfolds like a travel journal. Offwhyte is open to acknowledging the struggles he’s faced as a Filipino American born in Alabama who decided to become a rapper and start a record label with some friends in Chicago, but he also wanted to balance the acknowledgement of the bad with his observation that each part of the country has something to love about it, and he’s found a way to connect to it in some way. We do get the de facto political statement of including a few Japanese emcees on the album, such as Candle, JUNONKOALA, and Gebo, along with a couple of verses from Galapagos4 artists Hellsent and Asphate, who both bring that Chicago independent artist perspective to the album. My favorite song on the album is “Alabama,” which brings in beautiful organ sample, as Offwhyte reflects on his early childhood and the beautiful countryside that he grew up in.

It’s refreshing when an artist who’s been making music as long as Offwhyte has still has a new perspective to give their music. He’s made good hip hop before, but he hasn’t given us this angle to his music before, where he takes on the role of traveling essayist, as he writes about his observations about all the different regions and personalities that make up the United States. Both Sides of the Mississippi is an interesting document of 2018, to be sure.