The Koreatown Oddity is an artist from Los Angeles who has been releasing music for a decade. He made his Stones Throw debut in 2017 with Finna Be Past Tense. He had a real breakthrough in 2020, when he released his most personal album to date, Little Dominique’s Nosebleed. Now he’s back with a different sort of project, ISTHISFORREAL?

Little Dominique’s Nosebleed was a deeply personal and straightforward album that was easy to listen to and feel like you knew The Koreatown Oddity a lot better after listening to that. When it came time to follow that up, he decided to zig, then zag, than zig again with ISTHISFORREAL? The album opens with a short skit in which The Koreatown Oddity humorously claims that he’s been faking his Angeleno status and that he’s secretly been British this whole time. From there, it only gets weirder. Playing more like an experimental mixtape than an LP, you don’t get anything close to resembling a single on this album. Instead, you get a lot of left field beats fading in and out as The Koreatown Oddity hops on the mic to spit some abstract poetry and ponder the state of hip hop and where his identity fits in to everything. These beats and rhymes are connected with short skits, written and performed with such an offbeat sense of humor that you can’t help but think of how much MF DOOM and Kool Keith must have influenced this project. As a result, this album certainly won’t be for everyone, as it’s something you really have to sit with and let all of these different musical, lyrical, and humorous ideas bounce around in your head for a while.

ISTHISFORREAL? is not the most accessible album from The Koreatown Oddity. However, for those more adventurous listeners who are willing to take a chance on a left field hip hop project like this, you will be rewarded greatly with some interesting food for thought and a couple of laughs along the way.