Last year, the Virginia singer Tommy Richman came out of absolutely nowhere, scoring big viral hits with the bugged-out earworms "Million Dollar Baby" and "Devil Is A Lie." He also pissed off a lot of people by claiming that he's "not a hip hop artist," and he didn't include either of his big hits on his debut album Coyote, a strange decision. But you can get away with strange decisions if your music bangs. Today, Richman's got another new single, and it bangs.
To me, the cool thing about Tommy Richman's hits is that they don't sound like hits. They've blown-out and amateurish, and they sound more like garage-sale obscurities that get rediscovered on Numero Group reissues decades later than like songs that truly aim for the pop charts. Here's this white guy singing in slick falsetto over wobbly, lo-fi funk beats, and it works. That's what happens on Richman's new song "Actin Up."
"Actin Up" has four credited producers, including Tommy Richman's "Million Dollar Baby" collaborators Kavi and Jonah Roy. Its ultra-rudimentary beat is built from steel-drum patches, like something Soulja Boy would've spent five minutes making in 2007, and Richman sings through what sounds like a mic that's been run over by a steamroller. These are good things. The song floats. Listen below.
