Last Updated on September 6, 2022, 6:38 PM | Published: September 6, 2022
Where do you go when you’ve bailed on the place you struggled to reach? What do you do when you’ve realized your goal and then realized it’s not what you thought you wanted?
Well, if you’re OKC’s own prodigal hip-hop hero Josh Sallee, where you go is home and what you do is put all that confusion and transition into a densely conceptual and frantically soul-searching album reckoning with what’s really important in life.
On September 22nd, Sallee is set to drop “Flamingo,” a trembling giant of an album that he began constructing in the aftermath of his failed and maybe ill-advised attempt at moving to Los Angeles and breaking into the West Coast scene.
Rather than overconfidently dismissing that excursion wholesale as some case of misunderstood genius or some impenetrable, insulated culture, Sallee chooses to directly confront the aspects of himself and his own misplaced values that took him so far out of his element and so far away from himself.
And so begins a theatrical and fantastically dramatic hip-hop soliloquy that runs headlong into the kind of naked honesty that most ironically detached modern artists of any genre or medium would avoid like the plague.
“Flamingo represents an artist purgatory,” Sallee told me. “I was sort of lost and not sure what was next for me, and I felt stuck. As I was writing the intro I had this mental image of all my relatives, and loved ones and this big feast in the sky with my entire life being projected in the sky. I started relating that image to the sunsets here in Oklahoma, the pink ones where it’s only that color for a few minutes.”
The album then understandably begins in the sky, with an ethereal, echoing voice urging Sallee (and the listener, presumably) to turn inward and figure out what he really wants and what he’s letting hold him back. The voice isn’t stern or intimidating. It’s pointed but encouraging, and it serves as the guide through the record, simultaneously a disembodied guardian angel and an exasperated therapist. It’s not there to give you the important answers, just to ask the important questions.
The whole album is something of a daydream, believably existing all inside those few short moments of pink sky.
In reality, “Flamingo” is a dense 50+ minutes, loaded with heavy themes and peppered with guest MCs throughout. But musically, it never aims to get on top of you.
Each track retains that overriding air of dreaminess. Even when things take a darker, more hopeless turn, like on lead single “Hollywood Hoax,” recounting the soullessness Sallee encountered firsthand in LA, the tracks still stay committed to the washy reverbs and spacious textures that keep you floating in the clouds and hearing voices in the sky.
If there’s any spiritual anchor that keeps the whole album from floating away, it’s the presence of Sallee’s friends.
For a record focused on reconnecting with your roots and re-appreciating the importance of home, it goes without saying that the guests throughout aren’t just random collaborators or last-minute additions, but close friends and talented artists that Sallee admires and supports.
Fellow OKC rapper Hugh Glass joins Australia’s Taylor Robinson on track “Paper,” a standout showcase for two of the artists that Sallee has signed to his own 88REC label, and Arizona’s Kaleidoscope Kid drops one of the best and most rhythmically exciting verses on the album on depression anthem “Ashtray.”
Working with hugely prolific Maryland-based rapper K.A.A.N. on track “Let Me Live My Life” was something particularly meaningful for Sallee.
“K.A.A.N. has become one of my best friends, and it’s an honor to have him on any song,” he said. “He’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. He’s been working with Dr. Dre the past few years and still stayed the same humble person.”
As the album draws to a close with the aptly titled “Home,” we’re treated not to a boisterous climax or finale, but a sobering, sparse gospel-blues church organ. Rather than take the lead, Sallee mostly hands the reigns for the final track over to singer, stunt woman, and staggering polymath Cassie Jo Craig, whose soulful voice provides a comfort behind the gut punch lyric “would you call a home ‘home’ if there ain’t nothing left?”
It’s a shockingly delicate and contemplative ending to an album of hard questions and inner conflict, but it’s appropriate that instead of handing you the answers, Sallee closes the record with that most simple and time-worn question: can you ever go home again?
With his roots firmly planted back in OKC, he’s hoping to find the answer for himself when he takes the stage at Beer City Music Hall for the album’s official release show on Saturday, October 1st.
“The size of the venue is the largest I’ve ever headlined,” Sallee said. “The stage set up we’re building, the lights, the visuals. It feels a lot like a legacy moment and I want to give this album the best show to go along with it. I want to take people on this journey live.”
When Sallee first left Oklahoma for Hollywood, his decision was motivated at least partially by the belief that OKC couldn’t produce the kind of big time, artist-focused culture or community of which he wanted to be a part.
Back then, before a place like Beer City even existed in OKC, he might have been right.
Now that he’s back home, he’s decided to be the change he wants to see by launching 88REC, growing and supporting the city’s artists behind the scenes, and dropping this album as a reminder that no matter how far away you go in your dreams, you have to remember to focus on the world you wake up in.
“Flamingo” by Josh Sallee drops September 22nd on all streaming services.
Tickets for the official “Flamingo” release show at Beer City Music Hall are on sale now at beercitymusichall.com and towertheatreokc.com.
Follow Josh Sallee and 88REC on Instagram at @joshsallee and @88rec_.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
