Vince Staples reflects on love and violence in ‘Ramona Park Broke My Heart’
Vince Staples’ fifth studio album “Ramona Park Broke My Heart” explores his complex upbringing in Long Beach, California. This album comes only eight months after his 2021 self-titled album which graciously explores his character and how he ended up as one of the most popular rappers of today.
Staples constantly changes and shifts his sound and sought to redefine what it meant to be a gangster rapper. He has worked with producers from the EDM sphere like Flume and Sophie to legends of the hip hop world like No I.D.
With “Ramona Park Broke My Heart” Staples seeks to return to the original West Coast G-Funk sound that artists like N.W.A and Snoop Dogg popularized in the ’80s and ’90s. Staples brings on legendary DJ Quik and accomplished DJ Mustard to help shape the West Coast sound that Staples is seeking. Both Quik and Mustard have grown and shaped the G-funk sound that many west coast rappers became known for.
The intro to the album “The Beach” begins with the soothing sounds of waves washing over the shoreline as seagulls can be heard overhead. Staples explains the parallel reality that the lower class experiences in the ghettos with the line “Growin’ up, ain’t had no lights unless it said to check the engine ‘Less we had to spark the wick, show somebody we miss ’em.”
The production is as sharp as the lyrics that Staples spits. The production is mellow and melodic. In the song “AYE! (FREE THE HOMIES)” a chorus of people can be heard singing the hook, lending the feeling of being on any street corner at night with a group of friends. The bass explodes in the background while the sound of crisp claps and plucked bass strings take center stage.
While the album is light on featured artists, it’s sprinkled with snippets and interludes from former and current gang members that grew up and experienced a similar upbringing to Staples. One of the repeating characters in these snippets is Sanyika “Monster Cody” Shakur. Shakur, born Cody Scott, is a former Crip gang member who wrote his autobiography about the horrors of gang life. Scott’s story summarizes the entirety of the album perfectly. For some, gang membership becomes ordinary and expected.
The skits, interludes and spoken word passages that Staples sprinkles throughout the album give a greater sense of what he succeeded in achieving; the sense of how gang life envelopes everyone when raised in poverty.
One of the most notable songs “Mama’s Boy” exemplifies Staples’ love for the gangster lifestyle that seems inescapable. The first lyrics interpolate the beginning of “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast. The inspiration for the song is from his attachment to gang life as a family unit. The comfort that a gang can give is similar to that of a mother. The spoken word outro to the song is the mother of Monster Cody who states “I’d like to think that had I not to had to work three jobs, two jobs, I could’ve spent a little more time and maybe he would not have become a monster.” The passage shows the need for lower-income households to have parental figures neglect their child to satisfy the need for rent and food. This neglect often leads children in the family to seek other means of satisfying their need for a family unit with gangs.
“The Blues” is the last and best song on the album excellently tying together all of the themes of the album while providing one of the best verses that Staples has delivered in the last 3 years. The song’s repeated use of semantic satiation for the chorus of “Money made me numb” serves to numb the listener to relate to Staple’s struggles. The song repeats this trick again in the last lines of the album with the outro chorus “Pray for me” said 11 times emphasizing Staples’s dread that he carries from being rich.
Vince Staples delivers one of the best hip-hop albums of the year with “Ramona Park Broke My Heart” and portrays an excellent perspective of gang life. The album tackles its complex topics while never seeming preachy or dogmatic. The rhythmic bounce of the G-funk beats combined with Staple’s mellow tone delivers an album that will stick with listeners for a long time.
