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D. Worthy describes his forthcoming album, Ridiculous, as sounding like “sprinting through a brick wall with a smile on your face,” and he’s right on the mark.
The 12-song record, which the Portland rapper plans to release Aug. 30 in tandem with a show opening for Chris Travis and Mike Sherm at the Roseland Theater, proceeds according to cartoon physics no less anarchic than those of the Looney Tunes universe. The bass is blown out, the synths are candy-colored, and Worthy exaggerates his already deep voice until he sounds like he’s broadcasting from Bikini Bottom.
To anyone who pegged the 33-year-old as a soulful rap traditionalist on the basis of his previous album, last year’s sample-drunk Everything I Could Never Tell You, the music on Ridiculous might come as a bit of a shock. “When I made this album, I wanted it to sound like one big fight scene in a movie,” Worthy says. “No cuts, no breaks, just bruises.”
One other thing about fight scenes in movies is how characters tend to get kicked around a lot and then get back up again. The comedy on Ridiculous belies a deep, deep seriousness. Worthy describes it as his “most important album,” and he speaks candidly about his difficult childhood in both the lyrics and the press.
The cover art looks like a garish pop-art tableau at first, but look closer and you’ll see it’s a skewed family photo, with a literally blacked-out father figure standing in for his absent dad and a figure representing his mother (with whom he reconnected later in life) crying because her son “chose to be an artist, when there’s so many other paths.”
“My whole life that I’ve been trying to survive hasn’t been quiet,” Worthy says. “It hasn’t been perfect.”
Born Danitrius Worthy in Cleveland in 1991 (he also goes by the name Dior Worthy), he spent much of his early life in the foster care system before reconnecting in his teens with his mother, with whom he moved to Portland in 2010. During this time, he absorbed the different genres that would come to inform his open-ended approach to hip-hop, which he terms “ghetto grunge” for its blend of hip-hop with influences from the Pacific Northwest’s rock tradition.
“I started having white friends, started having Black friends, started having friends who were hood guys and people who skated,” Worthy says, “and I noticed we had a common ground: We were misunderstood.”
Upon attending Eastern Washington University, Worthy started creating his own form of misfit music “as a gateway through all of the pain and trauma I dealt with in childhood.” With a fellow student named Marcus Matthews, he founded Blow Up Kids, or BUK, an art collective that oversees all fashion, visual material and marketing for Worthy’s projects.
“I took big inspiration from Pharrell, Kanye West—those types of artists who created worlds,” Worthy says. “They didn’t just drop music.”
Worthy’s 2012 debut mixtape, Anticipation, draws heavily from the alternative rock universe, and its title track prominently samples the xx’s Olympic-scoring instrumental hit “Intro,” over which Worthy talks uncompromisingly about his family history and the circumstances that led him to chase success as an artist.
“Anticipation” remains his most popular song, especially in Europe, where DJs took a liking to it a year or two after it dropped. Though he’s had a number of auspicious local gigs opening for acts like Young Thug and Post Malone, Worthy says his fan base is larger across the Atlantic than in his hometown; he recently returned from a run of shows in Paris during Fashion Week.
“It just really comes down to the internet,” Worthy says. “I can have a majority of my fans be in Germany or France, and I can still be unknown here. I’ve spent all these years playing the Hawthorne and the Roseland, building up that local circuit to match what’s happening on the international scale.”
Long associated more with indie rock and grunge than hip-hop, Portland has often been bypassed as a hub for up-and-coming rappers, and its biggest rap stars (Aminé, Yeat) tend to be anomalies rather than ambassadors for the city’s scene. Yet no matter how much globe-trotting Worthy enjoys, he’s keen to stress his roots as a Portland artist.
“I never felt in my whole life like I needed to move to another city,” he says. “I want to be able to walk by the waterfront, I want to be able to enjoy my Portland rain and enjoy my Portland summers, and take that music with me across the world.”
SEE IT: Chris Travis, Mike Sherm and D. Worthy at Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033, roselandpdx.com. 8 pm Saturday, Aug. 30. $27.50-$59.75. All ages.
