When a snippet of Liim’s new track “R.I.P Peace” showed up on my Instagram feed last week, I thought to myself, Huh, that name sounds familiar. Last April, I went with some high school friends to a tribute night for Gil Scott-Heron at S.O.B.’s, featuring Pink Siifu and Liv.e. A 21-year-old musician I hadn’t heard of was also supporting, and I’m pretty sure I missed him. You should show out for openers—because a year later, when they drop a song that you can’t stop playing, you’re gonna feel like an idiot.
Why do I love “R.I.P Peace”? It’s blessed with a bassline so chunky you could fatshame it. The early-internet visuals are a nod to Blood Orange’s “Champagne Coast” music video. And the song, inspired by and interpolating J Mack’s “Go Stupid” (an “NYC get lite classic,” notes Alphonse Pierre) is a sing-songy, 2000s-style love letter to Harlem and the city, filled with local references to the M103 bus, C-Town supermarket, and Levels Barbershop on 125th Street. Liim titled the track in tribute to Peace, a barber at Levels who he’d heard “was gone.” It turns out this was a misunderstanding: Peace is quite alive, according to a voice note Liim sent us, but “moved up to Albany, or some shit like that… so the new definition of that is ‘Rise in Power Peace.’”
Still, there’s something a little angelic about the beat, with its swooshing harps and the cherubic chorus that hits like a grown-up recess chant, as nostalgic and sweet as those cherry Minute Maid juice tubes they used to give us at the school cafeteria. I’m an uptown girl myself, so a 1 train shoutout (see A$AP Rocky, Wiki) will always get me going, though I think it’s safe to say Liim’s not shouting out the 1 for the uptowners learning about lite feet from their coworkers. In any case, I’m proud to be from the same city Liim captures on this track—a place that’s playful, but not just anyone’s playground.
