Shoreline Mafia Is Leading L.A.'s Unruly Rap Renaissance | The FADER

In the past half-year or so, Shoreline has emerged as one of the city’s most magnetic acts, a young, diverse addition to L.A.’s most significant stylistic movement since the jerkin craze. Their mixtape, last fall’s ShorelineDoThatShit, is a crisp, minimal introduction. It’s helmed largely by Ron-Ron, the Watts-bred producer who’s been at the forefront of this paranoiac new wave. The group’s collaboration with the producer initially began with a bit of theft. Ron-Ron and his management team discovered Shoreline Mafia when they found the group’s single, “Musty,” which made unauthorized use of one of Ron-Ron’s beats. (Shoreline had also swiped the beat for “Bottle Service,” which would go on to become another local hit.) After playing FaceTime tag and coming to a short stalemate, they not only brokered a peace but developed a remarkable chemistry.

“Musty” only features Ohgeesy and Fenix, but works well as a microcosm of the group’s sound. Each rapper burrows deep into the pockets Ron-Ron creates. Their deliveries are tightly wound; they start from a baseline of monotone and spiral out from there, adding wit and verve and sneers where necessary. When Rob and Kato do join the proceedings, they add punch and grit: the former is fluent in many of today’s contemporary flows, and offers something like an L.A. spin on the deliveries that are crowding national rap radio, and — while Ohgeesy is the group’s early breakout star — the Chicago-born Kato, plaintive and fluid on record might be its most interesting vocalist.

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Threaded through the tape are clips from a Fox 11 “expose” on the dangers posed by lean in and around L.A. The group, of course, refused to cooperate with the piece, and spliced up portions of the news report to open and close songs, and even to act as a kind of Reaganesque narration. It made for the sort of instant mythmaking that no marketing department could hope to coordinate on its own. But with the help of their managers and a serious push from a major label, Shoreline is positioned to break out as the banner act from L.A.’s new rap renaissance, a youth-led movement that aims to unite the city’s disparate component parts.