Groovy Steppin Sh*t, Lisha G and Trini Viv’s new set of prismatic bangers, emerged from a head-scratching linkup. While studying the music business at Drexel University, Trini Viv started fucking with the South Carolina rapper’s sound, paid her to rap on one of his beats, and some emails, weed, and studio sessions later, the tape was born.
That origin story reflects in the music: There’s a thrillingly out-of-place, out-of-space quality to Groovy Steppin Sh*t. Here you’ve got two totally different artists: In one corner, Lisha G, who says she grew up in the “country country” of Camden, South Carolina, where she first recorded in a barn, and is best known for hazy, red-eyed plugg in conversation with the Atlanta underground. In the other corner, Trini Viv, a recent college grad from the Philly suburbs whose zany, Pharrell-meets-Pi’erre-Bourne beats constantly bubble and shape-shift like the Thing. Together, their sound is one-of-one—psychedelic shit-talk that sounds more like it was born from alien communication than the nth Yeat album. Lisha’s blunted formalism reels Trini’s watercolor synths into her world, just as Trini pushes Lisha out of her comfort zone. Like WiFiGawd and Tony Seltzer’s Heat Check, or BoofPaxkMooky and GRIMM Doza’s I’ve Been High for Days, or even this year’s J.U.S./Squadda B tape, it’s one of those perfectly peculiar marriages of tough underground rapper and nerdy beatmaker that only comes around every so often.
Once a sneering firebrand in the vein of Rico Nasty, Lisha G has since settled into a colder, more nonchalant style more similar to Tony Shhnow or the late Enchanting. It’s all the more surgical: She sinks her teeth deeper when she casts off bars like subtweets. The appeal here isn’t the subject matter, which is mostly regular shit—getting high, getting money, blowing up, guys blowing her phone up—so much as her calm delivery and sneaky acrobatics. See how, on “Wanna Bet,” she revs into triplets for two bars before sinking back into a somber, Gucci-type pitter-patter: “The way I’m living… it get rough. It get tough/Ain’t no way I’m giving up.”
