Inbox Intro: Lamaj
Emailing with the rising Charlotte rapper about Yu Yu Hakusho, Mac Miller and more.
The Hang. Month 101. The Calendar. Supe Of The Day. It would be reasonable for a Friend of the Blog to worry that, just maybe, the amount of recurring features here has become an unwieldy, unlikely-to-be-maintained, recipe for disaster. And yet, because Super Empty is more a project of the heart than of the mind, today sees yet another one added to the rotation: Inbox Intro.
The premise is simple. There’s a lot of folks in this state worth putting others onto, and also rarely the time amidst everything else at Super Empty (not to mention life in general), to explore their stories via full-length interviews. What there’s always time for, however, is a quick email exchange — one that doesn’t get into everything, but peels back the curtain just enough to pique your curiosity, and maybe inspire you to dig a little deeper yourself.
Who better to kick it off with than underground Charlotte rapper Lamaj, who I got hipped to earlier this year by Brandon C and whose 2024 album He Turned Out Fine (as I mention in the interview), would’ve been on the SE “Best Albums” year-end list if only I had known about it at the time.
At age 34, it’s safe to say there’s a lot coming out from the kids these days that I (and many of my contemporaries) don’t fully understand. True to his age, the early-20s Lamaj is undoubtedly, at times at least, a purveyor of these styles — his bleak, desert-dry croak an ideal vehicle for the jaded musings over distorted, glitchy production (as on “fall from grace”) that defines much of Gen Z underground rap. But where a fixation on overwhelming, disorienting sounds and nihilistic quips has arguably cast a certain sameness over the subgenre, Lamaj — who counts among his influences DOOM, Mac Miller, and even De La Soul — seems intent upon portraying something broader and more complex.
You can hear it from the beat selection (and subject matter) on songs like “PLUTO” and “Soliloquy,” where bass-rattling 808s are present, but so too are searching meditations on life and ambition. Elsewhere, his earnestness and self-confidence cuts through the drunken, jazz-rap pacing of “10,000”: “Half-assed don’t cut it, I gotta stop misjudgin’/ myself, keep trudgin’, roll my blunt and keep puffin'/ I know I’m special, they label me ‘up-and-comin’.”
Given these sensibilities, it’s easy to hear in an artist like Lamaj a direct line to the often irreverent, sometimes dejected, but relentlessly likable MCs of a decade earlier — maybe best embodied by Chance The Rapper — and as such, be granted a portal into just how much cultural mores and vibes have changed in between. These are grimmer, less optimistic times than the years following the recovery from the Great Recession, and the music sounds like it. Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t dotted with hope, too. There’s plenty of it to be found in Lamaj’s music, and also in the brief interview below.
Relevant Events/Releases: Lamaj recently featured on a new track from Charlotte rapper JUNE! titled “BREAK.” Also, on Saturday, May 24, he’s playing with Nikias, Kashmir, and Joey Zen at Charlotte venue The Evening Muse.
SE: Who are you?
I’m a rapper by the name of Lamaj, born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. A man with a lot of curiosity when it comes to music, as well as someone who wants to help!
You've got two albums on streaming right now — 2023's Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming and last year's He Turned Out Fine, which I would've put on our Best of 2024 list if I'd known about it back then. What do the two albums mean to you, and how do you think you're evolving with each project?
Those two tapes really mean a lot to me. They were in a sense two sides of the same coin. BTORSP was my first EP and had a lot of inspiration stemming from my childhood, while with HTOF it was a more personal feeling project with the inspirations from before still bleeding through. I believe my growth is on the right track when it comes from project to project — I pay a lot of attention to detail, so I’m really hard on myself when it comes to my raps. If I don’t feel a little bit nervous when I’m recording, I’m too comfortable.
You cite Mac Miller, Capital Steez, DOOM, André 3000, and also 90s acts like Biggie and De La Soul, as influences, but your sound is more contemporary than some of those might make it seem. How do you think those artists have impacted your work, and your approach to music?
All those artist play a part in my soul. It’s about how they reached me on a personal level. Mac Miller is the one who got me rapping actually, it was fresh off his passing and I was so upset that I couldn’t meet him to thank him for helping me. With the other artists, including Mac, I look at a few things from each and what I like implementing. Mac’s whimsicalness, STEEZ’s and DOOM’s schemes, Andre 3k’s self-expression, Biggie’s cadence, etc. You can take a lot and just build upon on it, and I feel like I’ve been doing a good job so far.
While in some ways regionalism is coming back, social media and the internet can also make geography seem more meaningless than ever, with a single city or area code meaning totally different things to different people. What does coming out of Charlotte specifically mean to you, if anything?
Coming out of Charlotte is a big deal to me because not a lot of people can say they did. I want to help change the city as much as I can and if it can start with me blowing up from here I’m all for it. We just need to bring fun back to the city man!
I saw you mention in an interview that you took a gap year after high school, intending to go to college, and then COVID hit and you ended up skipping college altogether. How has that impacted your journey over the past few years?
It’s been a weird journey but it felt like it was meant for me. The fact that COVID hit so hard was just insane, though I really wanted to give college a chance, and I still may later on in life. It’s been a little rocky, but nothing I can’t manage.
In that same interview, you said that more than anything else, your goal with music was to "help the world," and be able to speak to people. How did you come to that philosophy?
Me realizing the power of music. All jokes aside it felt like a flash-bang — it attracted me like a moth to a flame. A fresh new responsibility that I was glad to accept, now I gotta keep going.
What's a favorite or inspiring piece of art for you that's not music? Why?
I’d have to say Yu Yu Hakusho. I remember watching the show for the first time and was so locked in. Yusuke as a character was so eye-opening to me because his development really stuck — we see a boy who threw his life away, thinking nobody cared for him, end up being strong and level-headed enough to fight for the world. A top-tier character in every sense of the word.
What should people look out for from you over the next few months (or revisit from the past few)?
I’m working on like three projects right now, one of them conceptualized, the others still tryna find the floor for them. You’ll see me in a couple features as well. Be sure to ALWAYS listen to my older music, you’ll hear something new each time. But especially He Turned Out Fine, my most refined piece to date.
