Blxst’s rise among Los Angeles’s best new talents is reminiscent of The Matrix’s pivotal scene, where Neo is presented with two options on where to take his life and the consequences that come with each. In Blxst’s case, he was left with the decision of whether to pursue his dreams or work to keep the relationships with his childhood friends and the mother of his child strong. As chronicled in his latest project, No Love Lost, he chose the former and is now reaping both the rewards and consequences of his actions.
“What I was going through was a transition,” Blxst said by phone earlier this month. “As far as falling out with friends, probably built a 10-plus-year relationship. So, me, I’m doing my own thing. … So it was a dedication to myself, really. It’s like, ‘No hard feelings, but you got to complete the mission that you started.’”
The project, initially released in September but repackaged as a deluxe album earlier this month, is a 14-song journey of nostalgic reckoning. Over the first nine tracks, Blxst paints a picture of his life through the prism of an eroding relationship with a woman. On the album’s title track, he expresses a need for a break to focus on his music. Though the woman is dope, the timing is bad. On “Overrated,” he walks the notion back, asking his lover if she’s “down to bleed the streets’’ with him, further proving her loyalty during the journey. But his tone, mirroring his life, begins to switch on “Gang Slide”—a 100-second interlude that uses “slide” as a double entendre for drive-bys and sex—when Blxst begins to see what success has done.
For the rest of the project, Blxst grapples with the loss of his lover, even as they share a space. “Be Alone” addresses the initial realization that his queen is slowly drifting away. “You be trippin’ on the time we don’t spend.”
“I pull up and gotta slide once again,” he raps. “You signed up, said you’d ride to the end. ... But you don’t wanna be alone.” By the end of the album, he’s lost the relationship completely and is left to reconcile the consequences of his actions. While the woman is based on the mother of his 3-year-old child, the album also represents friends he’s lost striving toward his dream—the ones who grew with him, despite him leaving his native East Los Angeles for Upland, California, at the behest of his mother, who feared for her boy’s safety. The results of his decision have been fruitful professionally, spurring three collaborations with Mozzy, an extended play with Los Angeles crooner Bino Rideaux named Sixtape, and calls for feature placements. But as No Love Lost suggests, success has come at a cost.
“I was laser-focused and sometimes everybody around didn’t understand that,” he said. “And that was basically what I stand for.”
The album is accompanied by a five-part short film of the same name released on YouTube. But instead of chronicling the loss of a lover, the film shows a lover’s betrayal, using the album to paint the narrative. In the film, a fictional Blxst and his girlfriend are convinced to participate in an undisclosed crime spree by his homeboy. Blxst is robbed late at night, beside his lover. Along the way, his girlfriend begins to feel neglected and falls into the arms of his homie. The pivotal turning point again comes at “Gang Slide,” when Blxst finds out the friend was behind the robbery, and his girl knew about the plot all along. By the end of the film, Blxst gets his revenge. He says the lady in the film serves as a symbol for chasing success and how it can be a farce.
“I painted a picture to where it was exactly what I was talking about, but I wanted to symbolize the woman as success,” he said. “And chasing success ... sometimes, it’s not what you think it is.”
These days, Blxst is seeing more examples of success. His deluxe project includes features from L.A. heavyweights Ty Dolla $ign, Tyga, and Dom Kennedy, and a follow-up with Bino is expected next year. The biggest symbol of ascent came this fall when he got a text from Top Dawg Entertainment’s engineer Derek “Mixed by Ali” Ali.
“He was like, ‘Yo, [J.] Cole in L.A., he wants to meet you,” Blxst recalled. “I’m like, ‘What?’”
Blxst obliged, pulling up to a Santa Monica studio to meet one of hip-hop’s elite. Upon arrival, Blxst says Cole geeked out to the crooner’s new music.
“Bro, I’m a big fan,” Blxst recalled Cole saying. “This is crazy.”
“It was crazy because I don’t know how he found my music,” Blxst said. “I’m just a little kid that was in L.A. just a couple of years ago, was in his room, making music and stuff to see all this come to fruition and stuff.”
The fall meeting with Cole shows how far Blxst has come and how much he’s lost along the way. But more importantly, he continues to learn the lesson Neo did in The Matrix: that the quest for a bigger purpose means sacrificing the life you once knew.
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