Photo Credit: Basil Vargas
Lionel Deguzman, the singer/songwriter mastermind behind Lionel Boy, hails from Hawaii, one of the chillest places on Earth. Clearly the laid-back island vibe stuck with him, even after his move to his current home base of Long Beach several years back, as the first single from his self-titled debut album (Out May 14th on Innovative Leisure) demonstrates.
“Mango Michelada” delivers a satisfyingly chilled-out, mildly psychedelic downtempo groove, with a minimal but assured beat draped by gauzy synth pads, while the breezy male/female “call and response” vocals amp up the sense of absolute cool. Overall, the impression is of a track that falls somewhere with within rap, RnB, ambient and psychedelic music all at once.
Lyrically, the track is a softly stream-of-consciousness recollection of a past love that ended in betrayal. “All my life I’m fuckin’ with savages/looking for love in the wrong places,” sings the female vocalist, at first by herself with only the synths framing her. When Lionel Boy joins in to double her, just as the full arrangement returns, it’s a genuinely relatable moment of emotion that make us eager to hear what Lionel Boy has in store for us with his coming debut. Gabe Hernandez