TETON VILLAGE, Wyo. — Every time Lyrics Born comes to town, he brings something fresh. The Berkeley native, born Tsutomu Shimura, has been prolific as ever in 2022 and his output is ambitious as it comes in the genre. Just this year, he released the collaborative twelve-track Mobile Homies Season 1, singles “Over You (Orchestral Version),” “Diamond Door,” and “I’m the Best Rapper in the World,” and now has sights on the 11/11/22 release of full-length, Vision Board. He’ll take the stage with his wife and backing band this Friday at the Mangy Moose.
Vision Board was recorded in New Orleans. Shimura found out about Gab’s passing, a longtime collaborator, and “rewrote quite a bit of it on the sport and gave him a shout; something I thought he would appreciate, something imaginative and way out there—he always liked those songs the best.”
It’s been three decades since Lyrics Born hit the West coast scene. In 2016, he dropped a greatest hits album, Now Look What You’ve Done, celebrating twenty-three years of dropping influential beats and raps. Local fans of the Bay Area artist have been fortunate to see Lyrics Born consistently through the latter half of his career, including with LATYRX, his longtime collaboration with Lateef the Truth Speaker. As a solo artist, his eclectic, underground wave of hip-hop has always included elements of funk, blues and dancehall, with a nice-guy vibe and spliced with LB’s comical side.
“When it comes to rap, I’m just a huge fan, and a huge collector,” Shimura says during an interlude segment on the Cutso collaboration cut, “Anti,” from 2022. “To me rap is fun, storytelling, political, ignorant at times, and I love that too. When I’m a fan of something, I will try to do it.”
Ox Presents Lyrics Born, 8 p.m. Friday Oct. 28 at the Mangy Moose in Teton Village. $29. MangyMoose.com.
