Timez Are Weird These Days

Theophilus London first garnered buzz with underground releases like 2009's This Charming Mixtape, but the Trinidad-born, Brooklyn-based rapper moves into the pop mainstream with remarkable grace on his major-label debut. London wears his influences on his sleeves. (Literally: his album covers are studied recreations of personal favorites like Elvis Costello's This Year's Model and, in this case, R&B cult hero Leon Ware's 1982 self-titled LP.) But he likes so many different things that the resulting blend doesn't sound particularly derivative: in a New York Times profile, he mentioned Gaspar Noé's psychedelic-reincarnation headscratcher Enter the Void as a direct inspiration, next to musical artists ranging from Morrissey, R. Stevie Moore and Brian Wilson to Madonna and Kanye West. True to modern pop form, four different producers contribute, including TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek and Ariel Rechtshaid (Cass McCombs, Glasser), but London remains at the center of the songs. (Having only two special guests, indie singers Holly Miranda and Sara Quin, helps the album maintain its focus.) Coolly confident without coming across as cocky, London presents himself as a stylish young romantic with a sly sense of humor. Musically, the largely electronic songs are a uniformly tuneful lot, ranging from the theme-song swagger of first single "Last Name London" through the dreamy '80s synth-pop trappings of "Why Even Try" to the seedy thump of "Girls Girls $." Best of all, the album doesn't wear out its welcome, coming to a close at a brisk 37 minutes.

Critical Mob's Exclusive Q&A With Theophilus London

CM: How do you create? Are you constantly writing and recording or do you treat each project separately?

TL: The second. When it's time to tour, I go into tour mode, and when it's time to make an album, I like to spend all my time on that.

Did you have a particular musical concept for Timez Are Weird These Days?

Yeah, I just wanted to create 10 big pop songs, like I never ever did before. I really focused on the songwriting, about how the songs would affect people and live on after this album. How to make people gravitate to the message that I'm sending.

In the New York Times recently, you mentioned you're a fan of the underground musician R. Stevie Moore...

Yeah! I just got in contact with him for the first time! I've been on the phone with him constantly while he's out on tour. It's amazing, dude, I've got so much voicemail from him.

You two guys are a lot alike, in that you're not afraid to mix up styles and do unexpected things. Do you think you might work with him at some point?

Oh, yeah yeah yeah!!! We're gonna work together in like a month, man. I'm gonna make, like, this big supergroup. R. Stevie's down with it, and we were just talking about another dude he knows. Yeah man, I'm really excited about what this record's gonna sound like. We've even made titles of songs we haven't even wrote yet! He works at night, sends me these weird emails with these great ideas...it's cool, man.

I got put on to him about two years ago, from a friend that signed me. They even tried to get me to work with him two years ago, but he was such a big influence that I was like, "No man, I don't wanna work with him yet." I never even felt I like I could even talk to him then, you know? But he's a great guy and he has such love of music and words. He's just a genius. He's a really good songwriter. He's as good a songwriter as Brian Wilson is, to me. Shoutout to R. Stevie!

So what was the first record you heard as a kid that made you think, "Okay, this is what I wanna do"?

Bad! Michael Jackson's Bad. The cover made me want to make music, more than the songs. Classic cover.

Is that what made you made you come up with the idea of recreating classic album covers?

I'm really into art and culture that gives back and pays homage to the work that inspires them. You know, twenty-thirty years ago, Fab Five Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat were talking to Andy Warhol. So I'm in my era influenced by that, and him and Basquiat, they were looking back at guys ten or twenty years before them. Putting those influences into their work just made their work that much stronger. Mixing Elvis Costello and Morrissey together, that's so daring for someone to do -- and not even musically, but as a cover or an art statement. It's just fun. It's fun to create something that mixes it up like that. I like to imagine people digging in the crates and thinking, "Yo, is this that? Awesome!" And also showing kids who don't know Elvis Costello or Morrissey or Leon Ware...my albums could get people turned on to something else that they can listen to.

Have times ever not been weird, or are they weirder now than before?

It's getting weirder by the minute, man. It's kinda scary.