Instrumentals 2 Clams Casino
When Clams Casino released his first Instrumentals mixtape just over a year ago, he was living off the rap grid, studying to be a physical therapist at home in New Jersey and putting together head-blown rap beats in his spare time, entirely as a hobby. He’d supplied a bunch of instrumentals to Lil B, and he’d randomly placed a few beats on a Soulja Boy mixtape or two, but he wasn’t making any money for his work, and he didn’t particularly expect to. When my friend Ryan Dombal interviewed him for Pitchfork around that time, he said that he’d never met Lil B, his closest collaborator. He’d bought a ticket for one of B’s New York shows, but he’d left early because the show was sold out and his friends couldn’t get it. (Ryan said something like: “Dude, I think you probably could’ve gotten in for free.”) The tracks on that first Instrumentals tape had mostly already lived as rap songs, but for most of us, they weren’t especially familiar rap songs; we hadn’t fully internalized those random Lil B mixtape tracks. And now that Clams has gotten around to releasing his second Instrumentals tape, his circumstances couldn’t be more different, even if his music relies on the same feelings and sensations.
