I’m of two minds when it comes to Pink Siifu. On one hand, the Alabama-born rapper and musical adventurer deserves a massive glow-up. He’s consistently kicked out ambitious albums that reward in-depth listening, full of aesthetic left turns but grounded in Siifu’s psychedelic Southern sensibility. He’s one of those underground treasures who should be a household name, and I’d love to hear what he might do with a bigger recording budget. On the other hand, he pursues his vision so uncompromisingly that he might be better suited for cult fame. Why subject himself to the empty-headed noise of the hip-hop media industrial complex when he could be chasing his ideas on the fringes, where no one is going to complain that he’s too weird or argue about his streaming numbers? For over a decade, his music has been thriving in the shadows.

It’s fitting to maintain conflicting desires about this particular artist. If anyone has proven that disparate impulses can be synthesized into a coherent worldview, it’s Siifu, who is of way more than two minds, creatively speaking. That preternatural ability to boil down his whole record collection into a gumbo (to borrow the title of his 2021 album) has not diminished over the years. If anything, this past January’s BLACK’!ANTIQUE was his best, most daring collection yet. The album veered from aggro noise-rock to electronic beats to the swampy Southern funk that has often been his baseline (the Dungeon Family may be his most obvious forebears), laced with casually excellent bars from Siifu and guest verses from a parade of indie-rap luminaries. 

ONYX’!, due out on Black Friday, is billed as a deluxe version of BLACK’!ANTIQUE, but it’s really a whole second album, the same way SZA’s Lana was a deluxe edition of SOS. It pulls from the same sonic universe as this year’s LP, but it’s not significantly different from the palette Siifu’s been painting with for years now. Thus, the album plays less like a BLACK’!ANTIQUE companion piece and more like the latest self-contained installment in what has become a deep and extensive catalog. It’s got me more excited about Siifu than I’ve been since he showed up on an Avalanches record reciting David Berman lyrics alongside Rivers Cuomo.

Siifu wastes no time showing off his range here. ONYX’! opener “Devil’s Advocate” emerges like a parade of spooky marauders, bidding you to “fuck around and find out”; it strikes me as a haunted reflection of Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, and George Clinton’s funked-up Mad Max caravan “Wesley’s Theory.” The intro gives way to the celebratory dance-rap giddiness of “EGM’!,” where icy synths and a beat that sounds like a Casio preset are the backdrop for chants of “Everybody gettin’ money over here! Everybody sit your ass over there!” Next we’re on to the nasty bass-powered boom-bap of “G CHECK’!” and the tense, futuristic burbles of the title track. Four songs in, Siifu has already taken us on a journey.

He continues to venture out into fresh frontiers for the duration: from lurching goth rap and Carti-ish rage rap to zonked-out West Coast G-funk and shapeless, jazzy piano abstractions. Joining Siifu along the way is another well-curated assortment of underground peers, a list that includes Armand Hammer, Valee (on an evilgiane beat!), Fullbodydurag, Kal Banx, Turich Benjy, and more. Each of them adapt intuitively to Siifu’s world, but none outshine the headliner, whose whispers, mutters, and drawls move through the beats as if ambling through different rooms in a uniquely decorated home. His subject matter isn’t nearly as unorthodox as his musical aesthetic — sex, money, flaunting his ego, protecting his family — but he paints these pictures vividly, with a low-key charisma all his own.

From the sonic touchpoints to song titles like “MIKE VICK’!” and “JET.EBONY,” the universe Siifu maps out on ONYX’! is proudly and unmistakably Black, even as it defies expectations about what that might mean. The album — and Siifu’s discography as a whole — is part of a long tradition of eclectic, outlandish creative statements from Black artists who celebrate their race but refuse to be narrowly defined by it. At the end of the first track, there’s a sampled monologue that seemingly alludes to Martin Luther King, about being judged not for the color of your skin but the quality of your output. ONYX’! is the sound of a brilliant mind reveling in that kind of freedom, regardless of whether the world catches on.

ONYX’! is out 11/28 via Dynamite Hill.

Other albums of note out this week:
• Mavi’s The Pilot Mixtape
• Equipment Pointed Ankh’s Eggs A Little Late
• Hit-Boy x Spank Nitti James’ Yeast Talkin’
• PLOSIVS’ Yell At Cloud
• Josh Freese’s Just A Minute Vol. 2
• Tulpa’s Monster Of The Week
• Excide’s Bastard Hymns
• The Saints’ Long March Through The Jazz Age
• Felix Raphael’s Do You
• Treaty Oak Revival’s West Texas Degenerate
• Ronnie D’Addario’s Written By Ronnie D’Addario
• Tony DV’s I know trash people who keep the oceans clean
• Ikonika’s SAD
• Shoko Igarashi’s Kokoro no Kibi
• Sex Mask’s Body Broker
• Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter’s Forever, I’ve Been Being Born
• Mint Mile’s andwhichstray
• Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night (50th Anniversary Edition)
• The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy & The Lash (40th Anniversary Edition)
• Dream Theater’s Quarantième: Live à Paris
• The Darkness’ One Way Ticket To Hell…And Back 20th Anniversary Edition
• Bad Brains’ Live At The Bayou
• Ian Boddy & Chris Carter’s Caged 25th Anniversary Expanded Edition
• The Maccabees’ Marks To Prove It (10th Anniversary Edition)
• Elton John & Brandi Carlile’s Who Believes In Angels? Live At The London Palladium
• Eric Burdon & War’s The Very Best Of Eric Burdon And WAR Box Set
• Petey USA’s A Case Of Yips (Extended)
• Madonna’s Bedtime Stories – The Untold Chapter EP
• La Luz’s Extra! Extra! EP
• Gwenno’s Utopia (Remixes) EP
• Butch Kassidy’s Ascend / Like Fire EP
• NØME’s MIDNIGHT MILES EP
• AJ McLean’s Hi, My Name Is Alex EP
• Hex Girlfriend’s Addictive Indulgence EP
• Red Ivory’s Please Leave, I Need To Wake Up Now EP