by Dan O and August Fanon

thirteen years from my first mental health crisis the feeling of still holding on, or holding tighter resonates with me greatly.

Damage inflicted on the planet has ensured no nice animals will be left. Any animal depending on a positive habitat is cooked. The animals we have left in abundance are scavengers. They can live off the junk we leave behind us. By the time my son grows up those will be the only kind of animals the children of that age know. From Whence It Came is a scavenger of an album. I didn’t realize this until I reordered my Bandcamp from most listened to least and realized it was my most listened album of all time. This album released in late April leapfrogged music I cherished that came out years ago, albums I come back to constantly. Why? Same reason folks carry a Swiss Army Knife. It fit whatever situation I was in. Sitting in the lobby waiting for my wife to get news from her doctor, walking to the bus stop to pick up my son, working on a project due now that I got very little notice to complete. From Whence It Came adapts and overcomes. It takes the negative results of the machine pummeling the world from all angles and fuels itself off it.

Where It Goes is the proper first song because you need to know that this is a soulful journey. The aches and groans of Soul samples have always pushed a certain button in YUNGMORPHEUS. After Jimetta Rose busts pipes with her singing his first words on the album are “He overextended hisself for the end game and the purposes. I was on the fringe living wild differently, a N_ had to work with it.” One of the reasons I became so fascinated with this album is that it feels no need to explain itself to you. What are the purposes? Where is the fringe?  YUNGMORPHEUS will often lead you to the hazy outline of an image and walk away with you squinting for more clarity. Self-Sponsored is the key to understanding this project. From the seething paranoia “I don’t trust them dirty crackers, none of y’all neither.” To the self-examination needed to survive and adapt. “Young wild N_ I was moving misanthropic. Talking wild sh_t to the crowd, they didn’t cop it.” It’s a journey. On the next song (Escovitch Fish) he repeats “I’ve been trying to place more value in my words now” That’s not to say creating more words. It’s about the concentrated power of each, power punches versus jabs. If you’re going to survive adequately in this world you’ll need to keep crafting the best version of yourself, see all the angles just to survive the ambush. No 2023 album was better when I felt like someone was trying to screw me over and I wanted to defeat them through outmatching. Victory through better strategy. I would put on Near The Cell Towers and let that chanting fall into the bass (THANK YOU KUTMAH) “Mentioned what I saw, they was dismissive. I wrote it down, kept it specific. Going back to the spot hoping they don’t see me. Crackers said that those was only tests on the TV.” You can feel the wandering eyes and light footsteps. It’s bound into the whisper of his delivery.

Hold Tighter// Don’t Mention It is so sincere. YUNGMORPHEUS isn’t trying to see any more tears in his Mothers eyes. Remembering being down bad or having self-doubt while being careful to never use these memories to justify slipping into darkness…rather the opposite. Sticking a thumb tack in them and placing them on the wall so they’re never far away.

I have to confess I grew up on West Coast hip hop and that is very much an ich YUNGMORPHEUS scratches. The Al Dali beat For The Evening is so gorgeously early 90s West Coast(Top Dog//Under Dog is another song that hits this spot). Even in the depth of this hypnotic groove and delightful hook the Feds are listening, the blue dust swirls in the wind. While From Whence It Came satisfies my West Coast needs it also very much challenges me. The YUNGMORPHEUS produced Heavy Bags is my favorite beat on the project because it’s not the kind of sound I look for. This mid-tempo house is well outside of my comfort zone but our narrator wraps around it providing the best hook of the project, a dizzying flow shift from any of the other songs. Quietly and confidently YUNGMORPHEUS can achieve anything he wants at a very high level.

So you need Self-Sponsored to set the rules of this world after Where It Goes sets the texture. It is then Layman’s Terms where JUNIE laces the kind of soul sample that pulls the pain out of the author. He broke hearts, gave dissertations, had schemes slip through fingers like sand. YUNGMORPHEUS can taste all the lessons like they just happened, concluding, “A N_ used to speak with angst now I speak with power. I’m trying to make the most of each my hours.”

At 19 songs From Whence It Came is so sprawling it achieves what a great playlist does, providing lots of different types of songs sounds and guests. It was surprising on first listen but fits together better and better each listen. Calling From Whence It Came a scavenger album of the highest order might not read like a great compliment. I gotta be honest. A lot of enchanting educational enriching hip hop we listen to is artificial. Making music for a world we wish we lived in but don’t. We really live in the fires of unpleasant constantly restructuring destruction. In 2023 I needed an album that didn’t just acknowledge that but talked me through it. Listen to Free Form Cash (Shoutro) as the Jazzy background meets the straight talk. No one connected to 2023 better than YUNGMORPHEUS; he could see the people living in ivory towers and describe them with ease never forgetting to do the same for the people on the street.

August Fanon section:

Dan-O  insightfully pointed out how From Whence It Came is a project of the times in that MORPH pieces together what I think is both at the same time useful and profound from the remenants of the mind, body & spirit fuck which is late-stage capitialism. I wanted to pick up on that theme a little bit. For me YUNGMORPHEUS’s music has always been therapeutic from the sonics to the lyrics to the delivery; it’s all medicine for the soul. One of my favorite styles of his is when he repeats pithy observations (that combined with the music), hit with the force of an eastern religious figure laying down great truths or mantras.

A perfect example of the mantra effect that MORPH evokes can be found on the track “Hold Tighter/Don’t Mention It,” which MORPH produced himself. Here we find YUNGMORPHEUS repeating the hook “used to be hold tight, now it’s hold tighter.” This phrase reminds me of the first time I had a schizophrenic break and my life was crumbling right before my eyes. A few people close to me told me to “hold on” at some of my most extreme lows and at the time I didn’t know how to take that message in. It seemed kinda worthless, or dismissive in those desperate moments, but I always remembered those moments. One of them was crystalized in a text message that I used to always come back to and try to make sense of months and years after the tumultuous ordeal: break down, eviction, arrest, out of state move, and hospitalization occurred. When I hear “used to be hold tight, now it’s hold tighter,” thirteen years from my first mental health crisis the feeling of still holding on, or holding tighter resonates with me greatly. I’m in a whole new space now in every aspect of my life which is great, but with all the good in that comes a whole new level of challenges, expectations and responsibilities. To thrive and meet the challenges of the day I have to hold tighter. And to survive in society today like Dan-O alluded to we all have to hold tighter while constantly building and reimagining our lives amidst global capitalist decay.