Blvck Svm’s ‘michelinman’ Might Be Hip-Hop’s First Fine-Dining Concept Album

The songs are both about fine dining and not, shifting between instructions for searing meat and processing grief with ease. Through the 13-song, nearly 40-minute album, Glover’s flow is a low-rolling storm, breathless and quiet as each song’s larger picture emerges minute by minute.

Glover wrote the album between April and September of this year and shot the music videos in the same timeframe. Inspired by From the Block Performance’s viral outdoor rap videos, the music videos for michelinman have a certain Humans of New York feeling to them, as strangers peel around the artist while he raps in public — in this case, inside prominent fine dining kitchens including Oklahoma City’s NONESUCH and The Butchery by RGE RD in Alberta, Canada.

In the videos, Glover plays the part of an interloper praising the work he sees around him. In the one for “greymatter,” shot at Nisei in black and white, the kitchen crew makes quick work of several whole fish, slicing and deboning behind Glover in his puffy jacket. Over a tinkling piano loop, Glover waxes poetic about the Russian Hill restaurant’s raw fish preparations: “I ran out of excuses, I had to make something happen / Break a backend at Nisei or Momotaro / Sashimi otoro, chutoro, cleansing all of my sorrows / Soy sauce only an option if flavor need to be borrowed.” There’s a noir ambiance to the scene, Glover barely visible, the mic hanging in front of him an anchor through the rushing energy of the Nisei kitchen staff.

Glover has been chasing his rap dreams since he was a kid in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Back then, he modeled himself after the Southern icon Lil Wayne — but that was just for fun during lunch. It was while he was a student at the University of Chicago, shaking like a leaf during his first performances, that he finally rapped in front of an actual audience. His handle’s changed over the years, finally landing on Blvck Svm as a nod to Cartoon Network’s Samurai Jack. It’s also an homage to Yasuke, the first Black samurai.

During the pandemic, Glover lost his day job as an assistant manager at the university’s gym just before his rap career started to go big: His 2020 single “bleach,” a brief, lyrically dense track, now has millions of streams.

For michelinman, Glover linked up with Los Angeles–based producer MIKE SUMMERS, but he tapped Fremont musician Max He for sample interpolation. He has been working with Glover for about a year and says that while the Bay Area’s music scene is vast, not a lot of action happens in Fremont — so he was starstruck, for instance, to be working on the same project as Terrace Martin, who plays sax on the album’s outro. “[Blvck Svm’s] music is about redefining luxury into something accessible,” He says, “not something reserved just for the upper class. He talks about the waiter sprinkling lemon pepper on his wings at Wing Stop in the same way he does about sashimi from Nisei.”

For David Yoshimura, Nisei’s chef-owner, it was wonderful to be involved in the album at all. Nisei is a fitting restaurant to highlight on the topic of “accessible luxury” — after all, not many other San Francisco restaurants pair caviar with mochi. Glover had reached out to the Michelin-starred restaurant directly via Instagram, and while a lot of people hit him up with offers to collaborate, Yoshimura was struck by the rapper’s politeness and professionalism. The shoot itself was an easy affair. There’s not usually much yelling in Nisei’s kitchen, he says, so they amped up the energy for the video.

Afterwards, Glover and He came in for dinner, and both of them raved about the mochi caviar course and the miso soup. “They were the nicest guests,” Yoshimura says. “And I think his album is going to be the first of its kind.”

Of course, Glover is hardly the first rapper to consider food. The late great MF Doom was famous for his lyrical odes to “Doritos, Cheetos or Fritos.” Earlier this fall, New York experimental rappers Phiik and Lungs put out a dense project called Carrot Season that includes a track about psychedelic herbal tea. And the Bay’s own Larry June raps about health food and orange juice, and even owns a boba shop in San Francisco.

But Glover hopes to be the first full bridge between the mediums — like a fan of flex rap finding a track that gets them deeper into hip-hop, or a diner who heads to Benu for the Instagram pic but leaves weeping like Keanu Reeves in Always Be My Maybe. His inspirations include MF DOOM and the Griselda hip-hop collective (Boldy James is featured on the album). He cites Action Bronson as another muse, in the way he de-escalates luxurious experiences through irreverent, abstract bars.

Glover’s training to get to that level is, fittingly, spent at the chef’s table.

“All those things people see as art in food are also in rap. So I spend my time watching how they move through the space,” he says. “The timing, the precision.”