By Ben Bonadies
Photo by Sherilyn Furneaux
I want to start this by saying that I am not a PR agency. I think the idea in people’s heads of a journalist is someone who only reports on things that can be proven. Really, covering music is only a few degrees away from covering sports. A sports writer is good at two things: observing and analyzing. There’s no way to verify that Kristaps Porzingis isn’t taking sufficient advantage of mismatches in the post, but if you’re really clued in to the Celtics this season you might just agree. When you’re paying attention, you notice things when they happen. Music journalism is like this.
Observation: Pink Navel releases a new album called How to Capture Playful co-credited with Kenny Segal. This is the kind of observation you might call “news.” Many journalists make their mettle covering the news, but to call this observation “news” would be like calling a billboard “news.” I would not call a billboard “news.” I am not a PR agency.
Analysis: This is maybe the highest profile release of Pink Navel’s career. The Pembroke, Massachusetts rapper-producer – born Devin Bailey – has been steadily putting out esoteric hip-hop on Bandcamp since 2016. Their early output, beat tapes that drew heavily on the soundscapes of video games and Internet ephemera, positioned Navel as a producer who proudly repped their dorkiness and only occasionally displayed their own herky-jerky bars. With every subsequent drop, the beats got tighter and the rapping found its focus as Dev’s flow settled into what is now their signature style: taut flows chock full of interior rhyme and Easter eggs for their fellow nerds. The tapes also became increasingly collaborative; Dev wasn’t the only producer credited for beats anymore. In fact, Playful isn’t even the first Pink Navel / Kenny Segal linkup—that came on 2018’s “Born on The Stairs.” Now with a steadily growing cult behind them and cosigns from indie stalwart Open Mike Eagle and Ruby Yacht labelmate R.A.P. Ferreira, Pink Navel is poised to break into the underground’s A-list.
A quick aside about this Kenny Segal guy since he’s something of a star on the rise himself. He’s the producer half of one of the year’s best-reviewed rapper-producer team-up albums, Maps with Billy Woods. He’s also been behind the boards on some beloved albums from milo and Armand Hammer. Attaching himself to Pink Navel at this moment lends an “Oh shit” quality to Playful that the album rides to great success.
When I heard that Navel was going to be performing Playful in its entirety at their homecoming show at Warehouse XI, I had that same “Oh shit” feeling. A beloved rapper fresh off releasing a new album returns to their home turf to play what may be their best work yet? Too big a confluence of cool shit to ignore, the kind of event that it is the sacred duty of Allston Pudding to capture.
The Pink Navel live setup is about as bare-bones as it gets: just Dev (in their signature knit cap) and a controller used to trigger sounds and modify their vocals. For all its simplicity, Dev manages to get a fair bit of mileage out of it. Not only does it foreground Pink Navel as both MC and producer (setting them apart from a sea of rappers content to play their tracks through a PA and call it a day) but the array of effects at their disposal made every song and interstitial interesting. My favorite was a laser beam-like whooshing sound that Dev triggered with a twist of a knob, snapping the audience’s attention to their gently bouncing form hunched over the controller. “Here’s music,” they announced, before launching into opener “Reset.”
Following some early hoe-scaring beats, the instrumentals settle into tasteful boom-bap, but the focus was Dev’s ambling, agile bars. The rapper was pretty out of breath toward the end of the set—17 songs in 46 minutes is a lot to get through. Many, many words came coursing through Dev’s microphone, but a line from their first song of the night seemed to sum it all up: “Favorite questline is the one where I become great at rap.” Through the night’s marathon set, and the seven years of honing their craft that preceded it, that’s exactly what Dev proved they were doing.
Catch Pink Navel touring with Open Mike Eagle this December, and find How to Capture Playful on Bandcamp or streaming.