Never Catch Us

It doesn’t take much convincing to give yourself up to the groove of a Curren$y track, letting his Nawlins drawl wash over you as the beat builds into the soundtrack to a getaway via private jet or Mercedes SL 550. There’s care and composure in the way that Curren$y constructs his songs, as if he’s armed with the knowledge that there’s no reason to rush. The sublime warmth and understated precision of the Pilot Talk series yielded meditations on the spoils of cars, weed, and money; consider also the smoking-room tunes of 2012’s The Stoned Immaculate, or the Alchemist’s waves of pounding, psychedelic boom-bap beats on their linkups Covert Coup and Continuance. Through it all, Spitta’s magnetism has allowed him to exist as a singularity in underground rap circles, a former No Limit soldier and Cash Money veteran who pre-dates the blog era yet has survived (and thrived) well after an expected expiration date.

Never Catch Us is the 10th collaborative project between the New Orleans rapper and producer Harry Fraud. They’ve enjoyed a particularly fruitful partnership since their initial link-up, 2012’s Cigarette Boats. Fraud’s blend of punchy percussion and saccharine samples grants Curren$y the space to muse on the minutiae of his everyday life. Because of the sheer amount of ground that the duo has covered to this point, there’s always the latent chance that they could repeat themselves. But Never Catch Us avoids those pitfalls: Curren$y and Fraud produce their most enthralling work since The OutRunners in 2020, seamlessly welding their quirks to form a welcoming environment, bringing a slew of capable collaborators into the fold.

Curren$y has an acute awareness of his standing as veteran independent rapper: “Now that I’m the OG, they wanna do it how I did/And I don’t get in the way, but I let ’em know that I’m here,” he raps on opener “Drop Zone.” The formula rests in his unhurried, leisurely delivery, almost forcing you to rewind to catch the smallest details. He compares the moment that he sparks up to Popeye eating his spinach (“Checkpoints”) and lazily muses about his Brabus G Wagon disappearing in traffic like a rabbit in a hat (“Airport Industries”). When Spitta kicks off “No Wrinkles” with the line “the Cullinan roof got the sprinkles,” it’s as if you’re posted up in the back of the SUV with him, serenely staring up as weed smoke and the sounds of a classic movie fill the atmosphere. More than usual, it can feel like Curren$y is doing a dramatic reading of a luxury Kelley Blue Book—but the richness of detail, combined with the charm of his voice, makes even the most mundane boast feel exceptional.

It helps that Curren$y is surrounded by a lush landscape of Fraud’s construction on Never Catch Us, not unlike the beats of North Carolina producer Ski Beatz on the first Pilot Talk. It’s as if Fraud wrote “WARMTH” on a big mood board at the beginning of his sessions, then expanded from there: He laces swirling strings with blistering drums on “No Wrinkles,” while the layered keyboard and piano of “Encrypted Messages” wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a 1980s James Ingram album. Never Catch Us shines when it locks into energy levels that make natural entry points for guest verses. “True Lies” is the platonic ideal of this plan, where the conflicting registers and techniques of Spitta, Babyface Ray, Styles P, and 03 Greedo mesh over a jaunty drum progression. Same with “All Season Long,” whose calypso-esque atmosphere is a perfect runway for the laidback triumvirate of Curren$y, DRAM, and Jay Worthy. Sometimes the effort to standardize the sound flattens the production (on “Money Magnet” and Dave East-assisted “320 Estate,” the beats are less invigorating than the performances), but those instances are rare.

There’s a trick that Curren$y and Fraud achieve with Never Catch Us that magicians and comedians love to pull off—making the familiar feel novel, without sacrificing the details that dedicated fans know and love. He rattles on about the particularities of private jets and fancy cars, brags about money and women; hell, even Wiz Khalifa makes a spirited appearance (as he often does when side by side with Spitta). Yet the small moments make it clear that they’re not nearly as complacent as they may seem. Curren$y is obsessed with finding new turns of language to describe the life he lives, while Fraud is dedicated to ensuring that you’re not listening to rehashed or reheated beats. That collective ethos of Never Catch Us is buried deep on “Dream Machines”: “Andretti on a run, he ain't losin’ steam yet/Still ain’t purchased all my dream machines yet,” he raps. Even if it may not seem like it, there’s always still work to do for Spitta. And he’ll keep moving forward, at his own pace.