Pink Siifu & Turich Benjy Combine For Substance Over Style On 'It's Too Quiet'

The joy of Pink Siifu is that you never know what you’re gonna get.

The rapper, who spent his childhood in Cincinnati and Birmingham before making waves in New York and Los Angeles, first started bubbling when he linked with underground producer Swarvy, who continued the tradition of left-field Hip Hop and electronic beats served up at the now defunct Low End Theory club in LA. 

Siifu quickly found himself recording with rap’s pioneering underground MCs, becoming friends and collaborators with artists like Navy Blue, Ahwlee, MAVI, Earl Sweatshirt, Maxo, and more. From his collaborative work with Ahwlee as B. Cool-Aid and AKAI SOLO as Black Sand, to his blunted out projects with Fly Anakin under the Fly Siifu moniker, the shape-shifting polymath has spent almost a decade sneaking out from under traditional rap genre tags. His solo work is even more eclectic. 

His albums from 2018-2022, Ensley, NEGRO, and Gumbo’!, span head-nodding boom-bap to left-field noise-punk experiments to Badu-ian soul hymns that would make R&B legends of yesteryear green with envy. 

When I interviewed Siifu in 2020 for Passion of the Weiss, he broke down the difference between his first two LPs: “Ensley is a project that I made with my family, my mom and my friends and my community, not like the community of Black people in Black oppression, but what I’ve experienced firsthand with my friends. With NEGRO I’m trying to tell the story of the Black human. Not just the Black man. I wanted to go into Black human stories of what the Black woman is going through and all that shit. NEGRO is just different.”

His decision to tell this story through a punk lens made it one of the year’s most captivating listens. On 2022’s Gumbo’!, he cooked up Southern comfort in the form of crispy funk jams and Soulquarians-esque exercises—songs that sound as savory as the album title suggests. Now, he’s recruited fellow Cinnanatian Turich Benjy for IT’S TOO QUIET..’!!, an album that ponders what, exactly, Pink Siifu might sound like in the future.

Siifu introduced the project with a riotous On The Radar freestyle with Benjy and nu-juke and ghettotech trio HiTech. They performed “WYWD..’!?,” built around glowing house synths and delirious handclaps. The good times keep rolling throughout the LP, which finds Siifu integrating some of the electro-leaning dance beats that HiTech have been making brilliant use of in their own work. Like all of Siifu’s projects—both solo and in his duos—IT’S TOO QUIET—sounds and feels like a house party. Crews roll in and out, bringing their unique styles and coalescing them with Siifu’s discerning taste and aesthetics. 

The album is bolstered by rising Cincinnati collective GKFAM, a group of artists including Peso Gordon, VonBeezy, Conquest Tony Burson, and Rich Park that first emerged on GUMBO’! and joined him on the “4ThaFolks” tour. The album features a laughable amount of rich collaborations, including features from Nick Hakim, WifiGawd, Vayda, VCR, Lance Skiiwalker, Big Rube, Nelson Bandela, Tyah, Kamilah Dende, and more. On the production tip, Siifu flexes his rolodex, bringing along Tony Seltzer, Harry Fraud, Groove, Apollo Rome, DJ Harrison, Swarvy, and more.

Despite this who’s-who of alternative rap royalty, Siifu continually opts for substance over style. The album is texturally thrilling, featuring blown out bass, twinkling synths that sound yanked directly from the cosmos, bubbling soul grooves, and scorched-Earth beats that sound like YoungBoy at his darkest.

IT’S TOO QUIET is a grab bag of deliriously joyful rap songs that span all sorts of popular subgenres. Siifu is both creative director and star of the show, stepping up in the spotlight whenever he deems it necessary and retreating to the shadows whenever it’s time for his co-stars to shine. It’s at once a display of his musical prowess and his ear, a declaration of his skills on the mic and of his power as an artist—just look at all the talent that lines up to work with him.