Florida is such a bizarre place that Grand Theft Auto VI’s Leonida—the game’s hyper-sensationalized version of the Sunshine State—barely seems like fiction. Known for taking its series’ settings to granular levels, Rockstar Games has lined the game’s upcoming soundtrack album with something for everyone in a microcosm of 2020s American absurdity. You have Morgan Wallen for Grassrivers’ (The Everglades) northern folk; Keith Richards for the suburbanites who moved there in retirement; and PinkPantheress for the partygoers twerking harmoniously in the clubs and beaches of Vice City (Miami). These might be songs for Florida people, but are they really “Florida songs”?
“That’s It”—the all-star collab between 2010s hip-hop forerunners Yung Lean, Future, and Metro Boomin—is the only track released thus far that achieves a sort of statewide ubiquity. Rhodes-esque keys and sun-soaked electric guitars—both right out of Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice lexicon—intertwine with the grimey, looming trap percussion of Florida’s present. The mood here is simultaneously muggy and chic, sun-dappled and gloomy: an undeniably Floridian motif that each artist has evoked in their own ways throughout their careers. Future glides over his longtime collaborator’s beat with the sort of finesse that sounds just as good coming out of a beer-splattered JBL Flip as a Miami strip club’s speakers. It’s not like there’s a world of difference between Floridians north or south anyway these days—vices are vices, and they’re not glamorous like they used to be in the ’80s. In the 2020s, the struggle of excess and pleasure that Yung Lean’s verse and hooks articulate is felt from the swamps to the Keys: “Money, clothes, demons, angel city,” it’s all “too heavy.” Welcome to Leonida.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
