LA Rapper RaneRaps Lively and Eccentric Music Brings Refreshing Artistry to Hip Hop

RaneRaps’ oscillating musical styes draw justified comparisons to Prince and Andre 3000. Which is quite accurate — even if he’d tell you that himself. On paper alone, being compared to the exploratory characteristics of The Purple One and Three Stacks are apt, with RaneRaps passing the eyeball test of such comparisons on the strength of his fashion sense alone. His outfits are multi-faceted sensory experiences; a glitzy and brazen expression of self that demand your attention from the jump. Just as much as his music is.

But the comparisons to such legends continue on, because what you see is just an outward expression of the brilliant world that lives in the music of RaneRaps. In a hip-hop landscape that’s grown stale with formulaic presentations and cookie cutter personalities, RaneRaps is not just a breath of fresh air, he’s a whole gale force windstorm of it, a dynamic energy that’s addressing everyday woes as much as it is celebrating the joy of life itself. And such a balance is what’s void in hip-hop today. For a genre that’s drawn from the deep wells of soul, funk, jazz, and rock & roll, it’s concerning to see little traces to organic interpretations of any of them these days.

Yet, with the music of RaneRaps, he’s able to craft a bridge between generations and genres, channeling his musicality borne from a passion for live instrumentation and a fondness for showmen of the past like Rick James. Since when did you last see a rapper who can invoke the energy of various sounds and influences while packaging it in a sound and live act that lives merrily in its own brilliant truth?

And it’s this unabashed truth that is crucial to the very veins of hip-hop in its current state. The mainstream is in need of some creative resuscitation, let the bars of one RaneRaps restore and rejuvenate what’s been withering away, slumped and in need of a revival.