Previous Industries - Service Merchandise (Black)

Previous Industries is three Chicagoans with a deep, shared history-Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT-who currently reside in LA. In a city where transplants often say they find it hard to connect with new people, these guys found a way around that by delving into the past to rekindle old connections. When that connection was made, they seemed to stay in the past, rapping about anything and everything but always bolstered by nostalgia and shared memories.

Service Merchandise, their debut LP as a unit, is named after a largely defunct retail chain, as are many of the songs on the album. Orbiting the dead mall as a spiritual concept, Previous Industries tackle nostalgia, heartbreak, joy, and disposability from three distinct points of view, weaving in and out of beats by Child Actor, Quelle Chris, and Smoke Bonito to create something new from a discarded past. The record was mixed by Kenny Segal (Armand Hammer, billy woods) and mastered by GRAMMY-winning engineer Daddy Kev (Flying Lotus, Thundercat).

The style of rap crafted throughout Service Merchandise is a previous industry in and of itself. It's conceived and manufactured by a rap group trading verses in a way that evokes greats like de la Soul and contemporaries like Armand Hammer and Earl Sweatshirt; it comes from a world of freestyle cyphers and open mics (pun intended) and rap battles seemingly bygone where hip-hop communities are formed on Instagram and Discord. But that doesn't mean this industry, birthed in the increasingly distant past, is dead. Quite the contrary; it's thriving.