Temporary Forever

Regan Farquhar reps L.A., especially in its Project Blowed-honed sense of limitless hip-hop exploration. But as his sophomore breakthrough Temporary Forever reveals on its intro track “New Aquarium,” it’s also the L.A. of Repo Man and its disillusioned-punk cosmic-goofball logic — trying to make sense out of an insane world through its mass-culture debris and the way it rubs off on people who can’t or don’t want to opt in. And since Busdriver’s approach to sorting through it all is to embody the most hyperbolic outer reaches of both lyrical absurdity and vocal theatrics, his songs sometimes feel like baffling confrontations. There’s this nasal, almost operatic sing-song enunciation to his voice that might seem tonally offputting at first, but is delivered with such an unpredictable fluidity and fearless ease and beat-jousting precision that it makes Eminem sound like John McCrea from Cake. Which wouldn’t mean much if Busdriver wasn’t also funny as shit, thriving off this observant sardonicism that piles on the overloaded verbiage but reveals precision scalpel-twists once you figure out how to parse them. (The fast-forward flute-looping “Imaginary Places,” which served as a popular entry point for his music thanks to its Tony Hawk’s Underground video game soundtrack placement, is the best way in to an aesthetic that refuses to recognize any boundary between the profound and the silly.) Even his heavy-topic stuff has its share of laugh lines — think “Gun Control,” an examination of the racist dynamics in firearm violence and 2nd Amendment politics while dropping the line “Look on your face look just like gorilla sphincter/When the NRA gave you the middle finger,” or the breaking of Serious Artist Kayfabe on “Somethingness” that prods at the potential of his words’ pure meaninglessness. (And that’s before Rheteric Ramirez shows up with a deliberate, wildly out of pocket assault on every level of discourse about race.) That means his more frivolous ideas, like the drive-thru prank of “Stylin’ Under Pressure” and the needling of indie-game haters on “Post Apocalyptic Rap Blues,” feel even more ridiculous — but it’s the kind of ridiculous that relies on smarts, skills, and a fantastic job of picking out the kind of deliberately disorienting beats he can just mold his voice around until there’s no surfaces left without his fingerprints all over them.