Service Merchandise

One day, you’ll wake up aching for some undefined reason, perhaps a little hungover from the one glass of wine you had with dinner, and solemnly think to yourself, “Fuck, I’m old.” There is new stiffness in your hips from standing too long in less-than-sensible shoes, or driving around town and pointing out that a new business used to be a different one. Aging is weird and often painful, but it’s also fascinating, even hilarious. The years speed up exponentially until months pass in a blink, the time between sunrise and sunset shrinking down to nothing.

Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT feel the passage of time in their bones. The Los Angeles via Chicago emcees who make up the new trio Previous Industries named their debut after a retail catalog that went bankrupt in 1999. Thumbing through it provided a specific kind of dopamine rush now lost to the ages. References to it abound throughout Service Merchandise—“I would not feel sad at all/If I could buy everything in the catalog,” sings Video Dave during the chorus of “Roebuck.” Most of the songs bear the name of a store you’d see in every mall in the United States before they became sad ghost towns, air conditioning and smooth jazz blasting in the emptied, echoing caverns of capitalism. But this isn’t just an album about how Gen Xers and elder millennials get misty-eyed when they think about Blockbuster. The trio uses nostalgia as a tool of examination, ruminating on the not-too-distant past in order to process the funny and sometimes heartbreaking process of getting older together.

The three rappers have such effortless chemistry that it’s hard to believe that Service Merchandise is their first group outing. They’ve been in each other’s orbit for a lifetime: Eagle and RIFT (originally Rift Napalm) met at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, forming the group PDX with fellow Chicago rapper Psalm One, which eventually absorbed into the legendary Nacrobats crew. Video Dave and Eagle first met in college at Southern Illinois University, forging a friendship and artistic bond that led to many collaborations and tours together (including work on Eagle’s TV series The New Negroes). During the pandemic lockdown, the three would gather at Eagle’s apartment for whiskey-fueled gaming and recording sessions, eventually compiling what would become Service Merchandise.

The album doesn’t stray too far from the hazy, inviting sound Eagle has mined for his last couple of releases. There’s a focus on street corner battle-tested rapping, the kind that places emphasis on the malleability of language and construction of unexpected wordplay; you can easily imagine them in a semi-circle, bobbing along to the beat, jumping in when it feels natural. Kenny Segal’s mixing keeps the vocals up front and mostly dry, giving the songs an immediate, inner monologue intimacy.

The rappers are all in top form, operating in specific but complementary lanes. All three rap with a singsongy lilt, channeling the thoughtful whimsy you’d find on early De La Soul or Jungle Brothers records. Eagle is a master of unpredictable, multisyllabic rhyme schemes, peppered with sly, offbeat humor; RIFT deconstructs concepts and rearranges them into a series of interconnected reference points (his four-bar riff about Wesley Snipes on “White Hen” is especially dazzling). Video Dave exudes a happy melancholy, his verses often digging through his memories to excavate personal truths. Most songs forgo hooks in favor of mic-passing, making the album feel like a loving homage to the nearly lost art of parking lot cyphers after the rap show.

Despite the deep influence of ’90s hip-hop culture, Service Merchandise isn’t hollow or throwback pastiche. Frequent OME collaborator Child Actor provides the lion’s share of the lush, trippy production, but Quelle Chris and Smoke Bonito’s beats are just as blurry. It’s as though they’re trying to recreate golden-era sounds armed with only the fog of memory and a faulty four-track. That loose, shaggy comfort allows the rappers to stumble upon moments of profound honesty and self-reflection. On the vaporous psychedelia of “Pliers,” RIFT issues a quick, devastating line about his drinking habits: “My vices love it when I grip them, and I know because they hold me back.” Dave gets wistful over a minor-key flute loop on “Fotomat,” turning a story of lying to his mother into a sober look at his conflict-avoidant tendencies. Eagle spends most of his closing verse on “White Hen”—an airy but lumbering boom-bap jam—questioning reality through a serpentine flow before declaring that he’s “the captain of a ship about to run in the ground.”

Listening to Service Merchandise often feels like being let in on a fast-moving group chat, the kind where inside jokes and grinning shit talk sit comfortably next to heartfelt vulnerability. Previous Industries is a group forged from genuine camaraderie; these guys really trust each other, letting their shared memories of campy ’80s movies and afternoons spent watching Nickelodeon lead into deep conversations about the nature of existence. It’s a record shaped by the joy of rapping with your friends, spitting lines that evoke some good-natured jealousy. But most of all, this music could only be made after acknowledging there are fewer years in front of you than behind.