Pink Siifu on Black’!Antique and why albums still matter

The rap iconoclast considers his fourth solo project “a victory lap.” He’s earned it.

January 29, 2025
Pink Siifu on <i>Black’!Antique</i> and why albums still matter Pink Siifu. Phot by Jack McKain  

Pink Siifu wanted his new album Black’!Antique to feel like a “victory lap,” he tells me, and he created an appropriately auspicious day for its release. He dropped his fourth solo album on January 27, his 33rd birthday, and when I call him that day he’s plotting a low-key celebration: food cooked by mom, then catching a couple of movies in theaters with his girlfriend and kids. These are ideal surroundings to speak to Siifu. He’s a rapper and producer brought to life by his community, whether that’s his people or the artists he moulds himself after, and who shifts constellations rather than wait for stars to align.

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Since releasing his debut album Ensely in 2018, Siifu has crafted a discography that plumbs both the outer limits of Black expression and its most traversed regions. As much a student of Sun Ra as Kanye West, Pink Siifu is a searcher, his solo projects hopping from Ensely’s soulfulness to the hellish noise-punk of 2020’s Negro, followed by 2021’s excellent, Dungeon Family-indebted Gumbo’!. Throughout his wanderings, Siifu enlists collaborators who help challenge and sharpen him, sharing full-length collaborations with MCs like Ahwlee (as B. Cool Aid), Fly Anakin, Turich Benjy, and YUNGMORPHEUS, and packing his solo albums with daring MCs, singers, and producers.

Black’!Antique also adopts familiar grammars and revitalizes them into a total sonic triumph that affirms Pink Siifu as one of hip-hop’s most compelling auteurs. The title track and “Alive & Direct’!” bring a Hans Zimmer-level orchestration to the post-Yeezus abrasion that birthed digicore. “V12’!HML’!” rattles with the loose energy of classic Neptunes, while avant-garde reworkings of the still-dominant sounds of DJ Screw (“SCREW4LIFE’!RIPJALEN’!”) and Three 6 Mafia (“WHOUWITHHO+”) are implicit assertions of Siifu’s pedigree.

His speaking voice just as crisp and creaky as his flow, Siifu tells me how albums are his ultimate form of expression. “I need to create an experience,” he tells me. “That's probably the movie head in me.” Just before Siifu headed out to the movies, The FADER caught up with him about Black’!Antique, his mixtape series Got Food at the Crib'!, and how the album format is key to his legacy.

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The FADER: 2024 was a prolific year for you, even by your standards. You had the Got Food at the Crib'! mixtape series, plus work on Black’!Antique.

Pink Siifu: I have a lot of music and I have a lot of ideas. A lot of Got Food at the Crib'! was songs that I didn't finish or that needed better mixing. or things that was just sounding real good to me. It was made off of the throwaway beats that I had, and great songs that were going to be on future projects, but ended up being a different mission.

The record kind of makes itself up when you’re working on it for a little minute. So I just was listening to what the energy was calling, what I was attracted to. That's how a lot of my shit is made. But it's all intentional. It was just for the mixtape heads and my fans like that look for everything.

I’m an album baby. I love making albums. I can't do the Lil Yachty and Playboi Carti shit, even if I would love to just drop singles and they’re hard as fuck. I would love to do that. I made “Roscoe’!” when Whole Lotta Red dropped. So I’m not saying “Fuck the single.” I love what they're doing. I feel like you can do that, but still bring it on home. Knock it out the park. I feel like niggas don't really care about it, and I definitely still care about how the pieces that make the whole puzzle.

That reminds me of this interview that I saw with this producer, Jack Antonoff, who said that the artists we consider great all made great albums. We all have our favorite Prince songs. We have our favorite Rolling Stones songs. We have our favorite Nirvana songs, but they made great albums. Your discography taps into this very specific and, I suppose, vintage idea of greatness.

Most of my inspiration comes from what raised me. Every album is Prince. Every album is Prince and George Clinton and Sun Ra. But with this album in particular, it was Sun Ra, Grace Jones, Missy Elliott.

I saw that in the sunglasses.

Yeah, definitely. Even the press shots were attributed to Grace Jones. I went back to a lot of Drake shit and a lot of old Kendrick shit, like Section 80 and Overly Dedicated. A lot of Ye and HiTech.

Funkadelic and Parliament, they just didn't have no fucking videos. That shit is crazy to me because this shit is the most visual shit. It was literally an experience, like an audio vinyl [that] you imagined yourself. I just feel like with albums, you should be able to tell that story without a video, and the video is the bonus.

There's an aesthetic through line between this and Negro. Some of the effects on the songs that you use, particularly in the first half of the record, are the same ones that you used on Negro. But in spirit, the album’s more like Gumbo’!.

All my albums is about how to how to how to tie all these niggas into each other, how to get all these niggas on the song. Negro was the musicians. Roper Williams helped on a big chunk of the album, and then I found my band and I just started collecting stems from them. With Gumbo’!, it was about community. It's just a lot of things happening at one moment in Gumbo’!.

And from there, can't skip what I learned from the next two: It's Too Quiet and Leather Boulevard. With Leather Boulevard, I learned more about musicians and how to tie everything in because Butcher Brown was helping. It was so much collaboration. Then with It's Too Quiet, I was just doing hella different shit and merging it in with trap. Black Antique’! is a combination of all of that.

And even back to the [2018’s solo LP] Ensley, I consciously made like [the Black Antique’!] tracks like “Last One Alive,” “Outside,” “Sleep At The Wheel” for the niggas that's always pulling up with the Ensley vinyl and got a crazy emotional story to share.

It's kind of beautiful to think of these albums being in conversation with each other.

Thank you for real, bro. I always look at Prince and George Clinton’s and Sun Ra’s discographies. Even when — like, respectfully — the streak ended. I'm trying to learn from that, so I end on some Tarantino shit, at my peak.

Talk to me a little more about how movies inspire you.

With BlackAntique’! and black and white being the aesthetic, I was really loving movies with niggas wearing all black and just the energy of brutalism. I love watching movies. You can never get bored mixing a song if you're watching a movie.

Are you watching Black Dynamite on the cover of Got Food at the Crib Vol. 4'!?

Yes. Love Black Dynamite. With this album, I watched Reservoir Dogs, Death Proof, Blade, Blade II, The Matrix. Some YouTube calisthenics vids too, bro.

Movies help you with sampling. That's why that Kill Bill sample is in there, bro. Sometimes when you watch the movies and you hear shit, you'd be like, “bro, I don't care how many niggas sampled something. You can always do it different.”

We talked about your lessons from your four previous projects. What did you learn from this one?

The family I'm building, my kids, my girl, wifey, that’s the thing that's really building me, like turning me into the G.O.A.T. I feel like I am who I always thought I was. I think my family is helping me become that.

Musically, I just did shit that I've been wanting to do for a long time. And I finally have the skill level and the resources and the people in my corner that can make it. I learned that I'm just dangerous, if I really stay focused, you know what I'm saying?

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

Pink Siifu on Black’!Antique and why albums still matter