Towards The Sun

Pell plants the seeds for New Orleans’ hip-hop resurgence.

- Amanda Mester

Since emerging out of its primordial ooze in Congo Square, American music of the African diaspora has thrived to such a degree that hip-hop is arguably the world’s dominant culture. From the way we speak to the way we view fine arts, its inclusive spectrum has embraced corners of the world far removed from its South Bronx birthplace of the 1970s. Here in New Orleans, one need look no further than Master P’s No Limit and Birdman’s Cash Money heydays of the late 1990s and early aughts to see the city’s proverbial place on rap’s map. But where flowers grow, so do clouds obscure the light, and the city has yet to experience a true resurgence in the field. Pell was cultivated by the same fertile crescent that birthed giants like Lil Wayne, but he is part of a generation creating a sound outside the parameters of what Southern rap “should” sound like. Far removed from the “bling bling” era of acts like Big Tymers, Juvenile and others, Pell’s generation is more musically diverse and introspective. Hailing from Gentilly, the rapper, singer and producer currently splits time between his hometown and Los Angeles, sowing the seeds for an eventual full-time base here. Since his 2014 debut Floating While Dreaming, 25-year-old Jared Pellerin makes what many describe as “cloud rap,” identifiable through its ethereal production and abstract lyrical tropes. 2015’s Limbo—buoyed in large part by lead single “Café du Monde,” which plays like a psychological thriller both lyrically and in its visual counterpart—continued his trajectory towards making layered, contextualized music. Frequently straddling the line between the otherworldly and the pragmatic, Pell’s music will manifest again with November’s Girasoul (a play on the Spanish word for “sunflower”).