Next up, is to get back to the raps. Two weeks later, at the Yonkers location of Juices for Life, on a busy road off the highway with cars double parked out front, Styles sits on a stool, sips on a protein shake, and thinks about how his relationship to the genre has changed but also stayed the same. “Hip-hop is religion to me; it’s all about living longer so I get to keep doin’ this shit,” he says softly, over running blenders. “But my rhymes have a different outlook now, more maturity, more wisdom, more growth.” Lately, he’s been doing solid feature work on the projects of fellow hip-hop veterans Lloyd Banks, Benny the Butcher, and Curren$y, as he puts the finishing touches on a three-part “final album” (rappers retire more than Daniel Day-Lewis) Ghost of the Past, Present, and Future.
In his spotless Porsche, lower to the ground than a bobsled, Styles blasts bits of the new album—still an aggressive rhymer but with the demeanor of the retired gunslinger in a Western—as he speeds from Yonkers to central Westchester. “Back in the days, it was the kind of place where you knew everyone on the block, you were checked on by everybody,” he says about his hometown. “You don’t see that as much anymore, but I feel like that’s true of everywhere.”
He pulls into the parking lot of his physical therapy office, where he’s been rehabbing a meniscus he tore doing burpees. He’s eager to get cleared so he can get back to a life of 25-mile bike rides. The lobby lights up when he strolls in. “Morning, Stylesss,” say the women at the front desk in unison. The men running the floor go out of their way to give him a pound. He meets his doctor in the gym area where they put him on an exercise bike and have him do strength tests. Styles is way ahead of schedule. “I recover from shit that takes a year in months because of my diet,” he says with a shrug in the parking lot. “I used to think I was Wolverine.”
Still spinning the album, he goes about his day. He stops by a Yonkers barbershop where he sweeps up their floor before getting his beard shaped up. He relaxes at his studio, watching Being John Malkovich for an episode of his movie podcast, 2 Jews & 2 Black Dudes. “This nigga crazy,” he says whenever John Cusack, the film’s protagnist, is on the screen. He goes back to the juice bar where he hangs out in front, smokes, and mingles with everyone coming in and out of the shop. “I’m blessed. A lot of rappers can’t really go back to where they from and be outside like this,” he says, as some passing cars bump his music. “This is why I can never lose my connection to hip-hop, because I’m really right here in the community.”
