Conveyor belts whirring; machines clanking. Blobs of plastic squished between hydraulic presses, pressed down into flawless vinyl records. The scene of a record factory is a familiar one, but more and more, its significance in the music industry amplifies. Not only because of the boom in physical music sales, but because of the symbolism it represents. What, to one eye, is a simple aspect of music production, is to another a harrowing reflection of the modern music world. Artists, now more than ever, are treated as machines, forced to churn out music as if it were a product rather than a form of art.
With his latest album, Not Labelled for Individual Sale, rapper Dome Lettuce is defying that sentiment. The LP has no certain theme, nor any one sound, but instead, it serves as a sonic reflection of his ever-changing attitude towards life and music. Beyond the music itself, the title serves as a protest to the product-driven trajectory of the industry.
“By using a term commonly seen in the context of packaged goods,” he said, “I position my album as a product, which is antithetical to much if not all of the messages I convey within the songs themselves.”
Dome takes the metaphor a step further, using it to assert his unabashed voice as an artist, transcending the predictable mechanics of any machine. “Simultaneously, the title can be seen as referring to me as an artist or simply just a person. You can’t take one piece of me and act like that is representative of the whole.”
All artists like to boast about their latest effort being their strongest, and Lettuce is no different. Though the MC can admire his past work, he views Not Labelled for Individual Sale clearly as his sharpest album yet. “I truly feel like I made improvements on all fronts,” he said. “Better writing, better rapping performance, better production, better song and album structure. This is definitely the fullest project I’ve released to date, both in terms of lyrical content and production, and I couldn’t be prouder.”
Although his latest LP is amongst his most expressive and versatile, it may have taken the least planning out of any record in the rapper’s discography. “I didn’t really know I was making an album when I started the work,” he admitted. “I think at a certain point over the summer I realized I had a sound developing and started to run with it … I didn’t have one super specific theme or message I was trying to convey but rather was just trying to express my current emotional state at the time of writing and recording.”
That ability to improvise, to find a fraction of an idea and let it blossom into an entire album, captures the essence of music as an art form. And it wouldn’t be the first time Lettuce had taken this approach. Earlier in 2024, the MC released SHANIDAR 1, an ambient-driven rap album and an electronic departure from the jazz rap of his earlier work.
Like Not Labelled for Individual Sale, the making of SHANIDAR 1 began with a few ideas rather than any concrete plan. “I didn’t go into the project knowing what I wanted to make or even necessarily thinking I was making a new album,” he said, “but it became clear to me relatively early on that a bunch of the beats I had made felt connected both musically and emotionally.”
Whether it were a conscious decision or not, that stream of consciousness approach to creation bled into the sound of the LP itself. “Due to the scattered state of my headspace at the time I wasn’t really trying to emulate anything super specific musically or stylistically speaking which granted me a sense of real freedom when producing. I think this process allowed me to achieve a relatively unique sonic palette across the instrumentals, one which greatly influenced the direction I went lyrically on many of the songs.”
Rejecting any notion of being pigeonholed into a single sound, Lettuce used SHANIDAR 1 to flex his production muscle, incorporating elements of electronica with heavy inspiration from the likes of Brian Eno. “I definitely take inspiration from a variety of genres,” he said. “I think that regardless of what genre of music you create, listening to other genres will expand your bank of musical knowledge, which you can then reference and re-apply back into whatever style you are making, likely enhancing your work in some capacity.”
While his musical palette is always expanding, the MC’s relationship with collaboration is mostly unchanged. Aside from his work with close friend enzi, Lettuce tends to produce all his material alone. “When I’m rapping over my own beat, that’s a beat that was made with my exact musical frame of reference, so naturally it’s gonna be easy for me to find a pocket.”
That said, Lettuce is not averse to working with others. In our previous interview, he alluded to a full collaboration with another producer, and a year on, it sounds like his network is expanding. “I have a couple EPs in the works both of which are entirely produced by separate people … You can’t artificially create that sort of fluid collaborative workflow and so it feels super special whenever it occurs, and I feel a sort of responsibility to capture that.”
Regarding the aforementioned collaborative album, Lettuce was noticeably coy on the subject. However, his plans with longtime collaborator enzi are ongoing. Over a year after their joint CLASSIX EP, the dynamic between the pair remains ironclad. He said:
“I think our chemistry is becoming more well defined than it was on CLASSIX, not that it wasn’t there to a degree but to me it feels like we are closer to arriving at a joint artistic voice that builds upon each of our individual musical identities but exists as something separate from either … I’m really excited for people to hear what we’ve got coming up because I think now that we’ve established a sort of base for our sound we are really building off it and starting to define what is the Dome Lettuce and enzi musical language.”
Going back to his latest release, the sentiment of Not Labelled for Individual Sale rings through all the rapper’s work. Beyond Dome Lettuce, his hip hop moniker, he releases electronica under the name podrepus and industrial music with the band Smoked Fish. “I think that, at least subconsciously, whatever artistic work I’m doing is going to impact all my other endeavours in some capacity,” he said. “On past albums, I sometimes felt that only certain aspects of my personality were showing through, but on Not Labelled For Individual Sale I feel like I painted a more complete and honest portrait of myself.”
Years into his career and years after our first conversation, the musical motivations of Dome Lettuce remain vague. Even so, diligence, honesty, and individuality are core to the rapper’s philosophy. A far cry from the machine-like work ethic the industry pressures artists to adopt, the MC is adamant to stay unapologetically himself.
“I think the music I released [in 2024] is definitely some of my best and certainly the most ‘me’ sounding of anything I’ve put out so far,” he said. “Every time I feel as though I’ve achieved any sort of progress towards this (vague and ultimately unattainable) goal, I almost immediately desire to push even harder in that direction. It’s almost as if with each step forward my vision is able to see further.”
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