Osyris Israel Is the Gateway to the Underground

Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.

Osyris Israel will get you hip. The producer’s immense mixtapes—usually put on SoundCloud without track breaks, so they can be downed like a DJ mix—are overflowing with rapper and beatmaker collaborations that will have you racing to the search bar. He’s got remixes (like a groovy rework of Young Thug’s “Constantly Hating”), genre-hopping instrumentals (drum’n’bass here, a spaced-out ditty there), and dreamy trunk rattling beats for newcomers and word-of-mouth darlings, like Lerado, WiFiGawd, Nolanberollin. Osyris really is as much a tastemaker as he is a producer; as much a certified head as an underground rap nucleus.

Born in 2001, on the Yokota Air Base, in Japan, Osyris was a military brat who can recall living, at various points in his young life, in Hawaii, New Mexico, and Chicago, before settling in his parent’s home state of Maryland in time for middle school. His parents were go-go heads, and, early on in life, his dad was an aspiring rapper who made what Osyris describes now as “old-head East Coast shit with a drum machine.” (That’s pretty vague, so, in my mind, that means he was like a lost member of D.I.T.C.) Osyris started fooling around with beat-making when he took a music production class in middle school: “They had us using a program called Mixcraft 5; it was horrible.” His big break as a producer came with his grungy, loopy instrumental for Lucki’s “Bprint,” off the Chicago star’s 2017 tape Watch My Back. That’s when Osyris went by Ravi, a name inspired by a line about “ravioli” on Chief Keef’s “Fool Ya.” He eventually grew out of it and took on his government name.

Since getting kicked out of his house, around the time of that Lucki track, Los Angeles is where he’s been kicking it. There, Osyris helped form the digital collective Corazonn, a loosely defined group of rappers and producers that includes too many artists to keep track of. His mixtapes serve to keep it all together, though, showcasing the far-flung members of his crew.

Venture outside of the tapes, and it’s just a lot of fun shit. Maybe he’ll lace melodic enigma Izaya Tiji with dark magic, or flip the hell out of YoungBoy, or get in his house bag, or do an off-the-walls DJ set for Surf Gang’s NTS radio show. Below is a (lightly edited) conversation I had with the extremely laidback Osyris Israel, over FaceTime, from his spot in Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley removed just enough from most of the Los Angeles noise. It feels right that he’s outside the chaos in his own world.

Pitchfork: It’s 9:30 a.m. over there in L.A. What have you listened to so far this morning?

Osyris Israel: The past few weeks I’ve been listening to the same shit. Just Dj Ess flips.

My favorite one right now is the one he did to Certified Trapper “Hole in My Neck.” I like really loud shit. I like fucked-up mixes and stuff like that.

I feel like your mixtapes can veer into that territory, too. They’re definitely really scatterbrained. Is that intentional?

No, to be honest. I really just be cooking up. I get tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. If I listen to a beat for too long, I’m not going to like that shit. Sometimes, I’ll spend a few days making beats that all sound the same, and I’ll get sick of it and try to go in the opposite direction.

Are you the kind of producer who works on a different type of beat everyday? Like, today is “Rap Day” and tomorrow is “Drum’n’Bass Day.”

It’s in seasons. To be honest, I don’t even make drum’n’bass that often. I’ve probably only made 30 of those songs altogether.

Thirty sounds like a good amount to me.

You think so? I mean, that’s over, like, five years. But, usually, whenever I make a beat, I start from scratch, so it goes wherever it goes. For the last two years, I’ve been making a lot of stuff to be rapped on. I think it’s fun and easier than the dance stuff.

Do you feel less comfortable making dance music?

I just listen to a lot of old dance mixes and recordings, and I’m like Damn, my shit don’t sound like this. I want it to be better when I do it. I’m kind of cool with making it at the rate that I do. I just want it to be as good as it can be.

What are you comparing yourself to?

Well, I wouldn’t say “compare.” Well, maybe I do compare myself to it. Detroit shit, Chicago shit. I like the mixes of Ron Trent, Frankie Knuckles, and Theo Parrish.

I mean, those are the heavy hitters. How’d you get into house music?

Probably through video games as a kid. Old fighting games that my older cousins used to have, or when I had a GameCube I had the SSX games and I really fucked with the soundtrack. They had a whole bunch of music I was obsessed with, not only house, but I remember playing Bloc Party “Banquet,” too. But, for those three specifically, it was only a couple of years ago. I was listening to one of Gum.mp3’s mixes, and I Shazammed a song, and it was Ron Trent “Jazz Funk Freedom,” and I just started listening to all his mixes. And there’s this one guy on SoundCloud, DJ M-Traxxx, he just uploads a bunch of archives. I listen to Theo Parrish every time he posts [Parrish’s music]. Shit is amazing.

Do you upload your mixtapes in one file because you want them to be consumed like DJ mixes?

Yeah. But, actually, I started doing that around State of the Union because there was something wrong with my computer, I couldn’t export shit. I had to screen-record beats and everything, so it just became easier to do it all in one file.

Were you ever really into the DMV rap scene?

When I was in school I would listen to a lot of Shy Glizzy and Shabazz [PBG] and Q da Fool when that shit was poppin’, but I was never really that big on it. Now I’m not that tapped into it except for when my homie Fendi play it and it be sounding pretty good.

What about go-go?

My family love go-go! Both my parents from Annapolis, Maryland, [so] that’s all I be around when I go there; that’s what they play to this day. I don’t listen to it much when I’m away, but when I go back and it’s just there, like even my barber in a fucking go-go band.

Is there a producer after whom you modeled your production style?

Probably Flying Lotus; he inspired me to drop whatever I want, any genre.

Do you have a process for making beats?

I feel like I have ADHD. I have to have a bunch of monitors up, so I can have a video game on one screen or something. I check out so fast I can’t just stare at a laptop until I’m finished. I got a childish-ass set up.

What’s the last thing you were watching while making a beat?

I like to be having something on that I don’t really have to pay attention to but looks cool, like Samurai Champloo; I have that on a lot. But the actual last thing was probably something stupid. I think it was a FBG Butta interview on YouTube.

Oh, man. If you were watching that, you must be deep into the DJ Vlad universe?

Yo, it’s bad. It’s bad. I be watching that shit all day. All the Chicago interviews. It’s a problem.

Beyond music, what influences your beats?

I got a daughter now, so, her. The two years before my daughter was born, I didn’t even care. I was just out here in L.A. doing whatever. I didn’t care about nothing but smoking and kicking it and only made beats sometimes. I wasn’t worried about making money or anything, then that changed my life and it made me motivated to just be consistent.

What changes did you make?

Just making beats all the time. And I stopped sending beats to anybody, and just started making music with only certain people.

With Corazonn? You started that right?

Yeah. Me, MKYFM, and my homie from Maryland, Acid. We made a Discord server and we just started to hang with people on there and people just started claiming it. So, whoever wanted to be in it, we just let them rock. It’s cool, some of my closest friends I met through that.

Do you guys ever plan to do a proper group tape?

We plan to, we’re just so scattered. Some of us are in L.A.; some of us are in Miami; some of us are in Atlanta. It’s the kind of thing that you have to do when you’re all together.

When’s the last time somebody really put you on to an artist that you ended up working with?

A few years ago when MKYFM showed me Tomibillsbigger.

I’ve found a bunch of rappers through your mixes and tapes. Do you feel like that with anybody?

I just be on SoundCloud going through certain peoples “likes,” going through the pages of those people you see on there who be in every comment section. I be liking everything. Then sometimes I go back through it and I’m like, Dude, what is this shit.

Are you pickier when it comes to your music?

Yeah, I just be slowly working on it. But all I want is for it to sound good. If it sound good to me, then I’m happy with it.

R&B Rewind: Deep Threat’s Deep Threat (2002)

Jolivette, Nitro, and Ken are Deep Threat, a Houston R&B trio that were in the orbit of the Screwed Up Click in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Until a couple of weeks ago, I was familiar with them only through their sultry, horny-as-fuck guest spot on Lil’ Flip’s “Boxers,” where one or all of them (I can’t tell them apart) beg some girl to let them smash. Their one and only album, from 2002, which includes multiple versions of that Lil Flip song, has pretty much the same energy. I could imagine listeners criticizing the album for being too trendy: The classic soul harmonies feel very Jagged Edge and the dramatic, spoken-word intros give off Timbaland vibes. Get past that, though, and you’re left with their unrelenting sex drive. They’re incredibly funny, too, mostly because they’re so damn serious: “I’m just a squirrel tryin’ to get my…” they sing passionately on “Belt Buckle,” treating this ridiculous line like they’re Boyz II Men on “End of the Road.” Also, a little bit of that Houston funk bleeds into their thirsting, especially on the album highlight “There for You,” a slow and sexy ballad with singer Nakeitha, backdropped by a slick, skittering beat that would go dumb chopped-and-screwed. These playboys were onto something.