It’s true: The Mario Kart Super Star power-up, long limited to 10 fleeting seconds of candy-colored acceleration, has been lawfully extended to an hour, and we have 454, a Florida-born rapper who imports gushy pluggnb from extraplanetary locations—Rainbow Road, authorities suspect—to thank. His latest tape, Casts of a Dreamer, which dropped on his SoundCloud last week, could just as well be peddled from the backseat of a sun-kissed convertible. There’s a top-down air to it, the fuck-it frenzy of a joyride experienced on copious amounts of caffeine, work and school teeny specks in the rearview. Considering its mastermind, a longtime denizen of the space between cloud rap and scorching psychedelia, it isn’t so much a surprise as a refresher—this isn’t 454’s first open-road epic, nor has he taken his foot off the gas since the last one. But damn does terminal velocity (still) feel good. Throw this on your vehicle’s Bluetooth system and watch the “Missed call: Boss (15)” notifications pile up.
As a skateboard-clutching high schooler, 454 spent his screentime with one eye on Baker movies and the other on FL Studio tutorials. In similar fashion to Fast Trax 3, his breakneck 2022 opus, Casts of a Dreamer first surfaced as a single, hour-long track. Not all of it cracks the 100 BPM mark, though its helium-stuffed samples and skittery drum chops are indicative of a Floridian lineage. Even 454’s most downtempo songs feel like skid marks smoldering on smoking pavement. Take “Moving to Fast,” a glistening slow-burn in which he apologizes for, well, moving too fast. His cadence hilariously calls its own bluff: He’s on his knees, looking up at this unnamed love interest, gurgling like a child choking on snotty tears. Girl, I thought I was just moving too fast! Girl, I thought we was just moving too fast! He’s still moving pretty fast, which is the endearing part: He can’t entirely smash the brakes on his spirit, but he loves his craft deeply enough to try. Even his failure sounds like a cathartic overflow.
454 tries on a number of hats on Casts of a Dreamer, which doesn’t scan as a fully conceptualized project so much as a free-spirited idea dump. It’s a joyride, after all, and far more infatuated with the thrill of movement than the finality of arrival. Seasoned as he may be, 454 still approaches production—his first musical love, long before he started spitting up-pitched soliloquies over his own beats—with the bug-eyed holy-shit-ness of a kid holding a brand-new MIDI controller on Christmas morning. This is gleefully evident on tracks like the sample-snitching “TEMS FLIP,” originally released earlier this year as a one-off single. Title notwithstanding, it oozes with the pride of having pulled this off: the Nigerian megastar’s vocal runs, originally cast in a vulnerable Future smash, repurposed for an airy ode to PS2s and instant ramen. You can practically see 454 leaping up from his laptop, overhead headphones proffered in an outstretched palm.
Tracking 454’s growth is thrilling not only because of his frenzied pastel music, but maybe even more because of its contagious, let’s-have-fun ardor. The rapper-producer archetype implies a desperate urge to see one’s vision through: No time to wait for placements, one might think, when I have my own story, and my own means of telling it. 454, skater by day and musician by night, seems intent on shirking indie-rap insularity, as if dragging his rig—laptop, speakers, mic, Focusrite, MIDI—out the front door, wires trailing. As he runs off into the sunset, Doppler-effected plugg blaring through his system, the neighbors are probably shaking their heads, smiling. You don’t have to match his high speed to match his high spirits.
