#don lifted

Southern rapper Lawrence Matthews commemorates his ancestors on "Once More  & Again" featuring Idi and Teco. In the video, he plays a pastor and there are shots of people living their daily lives, baptism, and a funeral procession. The single is from his forthcoming album, Between Mortal Reach & Posthumous Grip. He stated his intentions for the song in a press release.

"Written and recorded in February 2022, this song visually feels like a funeral procession in New Orleans to me. It’s also just a song that honors the mountains of lost black folks here. Generations and generations of enslaved folks, farmers, everyday black folks that have lived and died on this land for me to be able to walk it."

Matthews directed the video with his brother Martin Matthews.  He previously shared "Limelight Honey" and last year he released "Green Grove (Our Loss.)" The Memphis rapper recorded three albums as Don Lifted before switching to his birth name. "Once More & Again (Our Mourning)" is a funky dirge with a striking visual. Matthews honors those who came before him and in the process of doing so keeps them alive in a world where Black lives are too easily dismissed and forgotten. 

    Dear listener, I’ve spent the entire month posting some of the rarest hip-hop I know about to Tumblr. Here’s one more track that is a little more emotionally vulnerable than the rest of the pack. Don Lifted isn’t a household name, he’s not big in the music industry (yet) and compared to other modern hip-hop fat cats he’s got a relatively tiny discography to his name. However, if there’s one thing this talented gentleman provides, it’s an elegantly distinctive and rare form of sub-genre which I can only describe as ambient rap. Heavily instrumental, meaningful, and even atmospheric, Lifted is a sculptor of language and a true poet that brings a lo-fi sound to hip hop that is jarringly different than anything your average rapper could or would bring to the table. It’s got an R&B vibe that accentuates love, transience, and loss. His tunes are oddly romantic, quietly anxious, and far more ambitiously artistic in overall style than I think I’ve ever heard from this entire field of melody. He doesn’t just rap, he often tells a heartfelt story with his tunes. Hailing from Memphis, TN and steeped in visual arts, Lifted uses his talents to create a picture, a painting with his words. I’m not personally a big fan of emo, but he mixes emo with shoegaze and east coast rap which somehow manages to turn my hardened heart into a sack of mush. There are contemplative rappers out there for sure, always have been, always will be. But what this reflective performer does transcends mere contemplation and undergoes a downright lost and absorbed experience of introspection. This is Golden (The Wait) from the 2021 album 325i. It’s been my pleasure to deliver some much-needed hip hop to my page, smash play and enjoy!

"Just about every album released in 2021 has been a product of the pandemic in some sense, but few seem to have been shaped by it so thoroughly, and fewer still capture the feeling of locked-down anxiety, dejection, and intimacy so viscerally. Even when the track cuts, as it does at the end of borderline-meditative standout "Lost In Orion" to the sound of what seems to be his family laughing, the songs still seem to be set inside Matthews's head." - Alex Robert Ross

Love to The FADER this has been a dream!!!

"325i" the new album by Don Lifted out at midnight wherever you consume music via Fat Possum Records

Well…. We really out here….

SXSW 2022….. I can’t lie I almost did donuts on Winchester when I got the email 😂🤣

I’m eternally grateful and can’t wait to get on that stage…. This has been a desire since I started this! Thank you to everyone on the team that made this happen!

Well… today is my birthday… but it also felt like the perfect time to announce I’ll be performing at the Crosstown Theatre on October 29th. ✨

So wish the boi a happy birthday and cop a ticket! It’ll be my first show in literally two years and I’d love to see you there!! ✨

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/don-lifted-at-crosstown-theater-tickets-171415326857

#donlifted #fatpossum #crosstownarts #crosstownconcourse

“Once upon a now you motion still, perilous and inviting. You wave. You slide upon shore and shingle, with your foam inching toward my toes. Will you bite or sting or send me something more serene? With you, I never know. Are you witness? Are you accomplice? Are you forgiven? Come high days off humility, and you simply wash my pits. Come high days of holy, and you baptize my forehead. Come days of commerce and cargo, you hold a ship. And once upon a then you held bodies in the bosom of a ship until they leapt. And you swallowed them down. Drowned: these bodies unwanting to be owned. I said, you carry a heavy vessel but pin a body down. Yet word around town is you are life, sustaining and satiating all that I eat and breathe and be. And every sea in me shifts with moon of memory. Ancient griefs still haunt me, propel me, lift me so that no body can let me down. Call me Venus or call me by name, however you see me, see me free.” - Ciona Rouse

Darla - 09/28/21

Golden Boi x Studio One Four Three x Fat Possum Records

Darla - 09/28/21

“Love me now.. love me, love me not”

Golden Boi x Studio One Four Three x @fatpossumrecords