#MusicMonday: "Sometimes" by Heems

Heems, of now defunct rap group, Das Racist, just released the first single off his upcoming solo album, Eat Pray Thug, due to drop this March. For those unfamiliar, Das Racist was a hilariously brilliant hipster rap duo who began making music at Wesleyan University. While the two rose to Internet stardom with their joke-y 2008 single “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” their 2010 mixtape, Sit Down, Man, is a flawlessly executed record, ripe with academic references that tickle all my nerd sensors with style. The duo announced their breakup during a 2012 concert in Munich, following rumors of heroin addiction. (My brief experience with the swaggy cuties backstage at a 2010 San Francisco show confirmed their predilection for illegal substances.) Both rappers went on to release solo mixtapes in 2012. Eat Pray Thug, which was recorded in Bombay and Brooklyn and features guitar by Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, will be Heems’ first mixtape since 2012’s Wild Water Kingdom. Heems said of the Gordon Voidewell produced single:

"Sometimes" is about dualities, identity and the space between spaces. Like so many other people, as a first generation South Asian in the U.S. I often felt like I lived two lives, an Indian one and an American one. I lived, at once, in and between two spaces and outside them as well. On another level, I also often felt like in America I lived in the space between black and white. Dualities are normal though. As fun as rap is, I can't always feel happy. Sometimes I feel sad too. It also pays homage to hip-hop before me with cadences referencing both Nice and Smooth and Busta Rhymes.