“Decatur 2031” by Louis.
Welcome home any and all music lovers of Wilmington. Back again on another day of poor air quality to provide some indoor reading for your enjoyment. This week we bring you one of the brightest lights in the Wilmington hip-hop scene, Louis. His sophomore album, Indigo Child, has been in production for a few years now. He has played tracks for live audiences, hosted a listening party for the album at the end of 2022, and is potentially nearing a release date on streaming services. “Decatur 2031” is the first single to be released off the album and is the focus of today’s Song of the Week.
Review and Exposition
If you happen to follow Louis. on any of his socials, you’ll quickly notice how earnest his love is for the creative processes that he is so deeply intertwined in. Songwriting and music production is not just a hobby taken up for fun, but intrinsically rooted within his very being. Flowing over tracks from Freddie Gibbs to Mac Miller and Vince Staples, his continuous but non-consecutive 30 days of freestyles are some of the most fun you can spend in a minute on Instagram. Louis. invites you into his own online freestyle circle, where I imagine everyone else listening is also bobbing their heads, mouths hung unhinged in awe and excitement. Somewhere someone else is at home, also behind a screen, shouting about a punchline landing perfectly—just as I was after hearing his “Gold Rings Freestyle.” “Decatur 2031” serves as an exemplary vessel to the core tenants of Louis.’ production, mixing artistic influences gathered over time and his lived experiences as a member of the Black community in Wilmington.
Louis. has a short series about the influence Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period played in the formation and curation of Indigo Child. As a painter himself, he sought out this collection to imbue sensations evident in Picasso’s work into his own. Thematic underpinnings such as grief, tragedy, and social isolation are apparent even within just this lead single. The melodic chimes utilized in the intro, both pensive and eerily haunting, are reminiscent of southern nights spent alone, or the seasons that passed as we all spent time in isolation during Covid. His streams of consciousness take the listener on a journey of personal experience. Encompassing loss and misguided notions of freedom described as being, “stuck inside the myth to be the king you take the crown.” Louis. presents a recitation of his past that leads him to an understanding of what enlightenment means personally, and the liberating frequency he believes an entire community can be moved towards. Mountains have long been used as an allegory in reference to freedom struggles. Finding yourself, as a part of the community around you, at the bottom of something, in search of a “higher ground,” as Stevie Wonder once put it on his 1973 album Innervisions. “Viewing mountains/ we been up (ah yeah),” in the chorus of this song, Louis. reflects on the self dictated progress of his own journey, his own hopes and aspirations, and how they aren’t his alone but shared. “And Peace/ You want vibrations, It’s what you make it,” Louis.’ ultimate message is that to find peace is to find yourself. Louis. is aware of his story not as a blueprint for others to follow but as a reminder to find salvation in becoming, to find your own vibration and make of it what you will.
What’s Next
In due time (and at no one’s discretion but his own) Louis. will be providing Wilmington and the world at large with his sophomore album, Indigo Child. For more details on its release and to further dive into his creations, follow @louistherapper on Instagram. He will be DJing at the Cameron Art Museum’s Love and Dance Pride event on June 25th.
Juneteenth Commemoration
We at the Port City Experiment want to take the time to celebrate and commemorate today, Juneteenth, as a day of emancipation and freedom and to memorialize all the freedom fighters who gave their life and to the activists still committed to the struggle today.
“Fighting to upright himself in a current of uncertainty and dissipation, the Indigo Child undergoes a transformative journey that finds its heart in the besting of self,” Louis.’ brief description of the transformative process and the creative direction behind the making of his sophomore album, Indigo Child, is in many ways indicative of this holiday.
From the lives freed in 1865 in Galveston, Texas, to the black liberation movements of the 20th century, to the Weelaunee forest in Atlanta, “Freedom is a constant struggle,” as once stated by Angela Davis. We only aim to align ourselves with liberation movements both at home, here in Wilmington, and to communities across the United States.
Ben “Danger” Matthews | PCE
Chief Word Person
The Port City Experiment 