DOOM’s “Bookfiend” traverses into the thumping leftfield underground, while Mac Miller’s “Bird Call” is stamped with a hard-hitting boom-bap kit. Otherwise, he’s mostly tailored his usual aesthetic around different hip-hop subgenres. There is one point in which his penchant to change things up stumps him, and that’s “Youforia”, the overly confetti-like closer from Mac Miller’s Watching Movies with the Sound Off. Instrumental Mixtape 3 is a varied listen, demonstrating Volpe’s repertoire without losing continuity. Surely, Volpe paid some attention to this tape’s sequencing, but we’re not talking about a Flying Lotus album. The latest in his series of instrumental mixtapes is not just logical it’s another easy opportunity to examine how much he’s come to shape rap’s infinitely sprawling landscape. That’s actually his explanation of things: To rejuvenate his sound during one dry spell, he’s said, he began to formulate his beats so that they’d glow as instrumental music. Better known as Clams Casino, he arrived in 2010 with a syrupy, pressurized sound and an approach partly shaped by past misfortune.
Even with some of his signature beats ( A$AP Rocky’s “Lvl” and “Hell”, plus Mikkey Ekko’s “Pull Me Down”, to name three from 2013), New Jersey’s Mike Volpe has produced well-manicured music that works, though rap-based, without a rapper present.
