Catching Up with YUNGMORPHEUS at His Recent Show in Camden

L.A.-based underground hip-hop artist YUNGMORPHEUS took the stage last month on May 7th at the Camden Assembly Hall in London with his introspective and poetic take on hip-hop. MORPH is an artist I’ve been dying to see spit for quite a while now. I regard him as one of the greats within his corner of the genre. MORPH was kind enough to let me ask him some questions. We spoke about his artistry, opinions on the current climate of the scene, and much more.

Before diving into the interview, we must talk about the show. Opening the night was Jaydon Clover. She is a Birmingham-born singer who treads the line between traditional R&B, Neo-soul, and, most surprisingly, underground/lo-fi hip-hop. Before the night, I was unfamiliar with Jaydon’s work.

With production from YUNGMORPHEUS himself and Dylantheinfamous, she can effortlessly blend notes of lo-fi and drumless hip-hop composed of soulful sample loops as the backdrop for her breathtaking vocals. Her vocals would not sound out of place amongst the likes of Ravyn Lenae. This unique blend of sounds excites me, so I was ecstatic to discover this artist live in the flesh.

Moving onto the main event, MORPH took to the stage alone equipped with his Roland SP-404 as his personal DJ. This minimalist setup perfectly sums up his outlook on music as a producer and performer. The crowd was intimate and rather small, but you could feel the love for MORPH in the room.

We heard a range of tracks from the majority of his discography, including some of my personal favourites, such as “do you…? (feel me)” produced by Theravada and “ride dirty” from his 2021 album. MORPH previewed some tracks from his forthcoming record, Waking Up & Choosing Violence. The album was produced by Alexander Spit and is set for release on June 28th.

After the show, MORPH and I took to the green room for a chat. As I mentioned earlier, I regard this artist as a heavyweight in the lo-fi, abstract, underground hip-hop scene, so I was interested in his opinion on the current climate of the subgenre. For context, this lane of hip-hop is fairly new despite some claims that the likes of MF DOOM pioneered the sound as early as 1999.

In my opinion, the sub-genre emerged alongside Roc Marciano around 2010. But this is all very debatable, so there’s no need to discuss it. To cut a long story short, like any other subgenre, it has slowly but surely reached mass consciousness which is a double-edged sword as a handful of amazing artists have gotten the respect they deserve but at the cost of the music getting into the wrong hands.

Which leads me to the first question that I asked MORPH. “How do you feel about the likes of OvrKast and Conductor Williams producing for Drake?” He responded, “I fuck with OvrKast and Conductor, so I’m kind of like fuck it. Do I like Drake that much? No. Do I like them? Yes. I’m not gonna listen to those joints. But I’m like, damn that’s hard that ‘Kast got one off with that cat so that more people can be tapped with his body of work. That’s great!”

I’m not going to dive into why the sound reaching Drake is an issue. I think Kendrick Lamar has done a good job of explaining already. Listen to “not like us” if you don’t follow. Off the back of this question, I wanted to ask MORPH if he intended to ‘switch it up’ if the sound became too mainstream. I referenced his frequent collaborator, Pink Siifu, who regularly bounces from sound to sound and whether he would be interested in taking a similar path.

I fear that this question may have come across as condescending, perhaps inferring that the majority of his releases sound the same. This was certainly not intentional. My favourite tracks of MORPH’s are his most experimental. For example, the single “where it goes,” featuring gospel singer Jimetta Rose. As a fan, I just wanted to know if there was more where that came from.

He responded, “I’m trying to enjoy my life and broaden my horizons and that will inherently be reflected in my music. You’ve got to have your identity but also be willing to explore, and I am a space traveller!”

Around this point in the interview, I was somewhat thrown off concentration by security. They wanted us out of the venue, which was fair enough. So, I wrapped up the conversation with a final question.

As an equally excellent producer, I was interested in why MORPH regularly opts for collaborating with other producers as opposed to self-produced bodies of work.

I asked, “What are the key differences in your creative process when you make the beats yourself?” He answered, “You can spend hella time with the music when you make it yourself, it makes you think about it differently.”

YUNGMORPEUS, photo by Alfie Pike