Before Lucy Camp was Lucy Camp, she was LuzID, a mash-up of her name and Freud’s “id.”
For Freud, the id represents a person’s basic, unconscious impulses and seeks to act on these impulses to experience pleasure. While her name might have changed, Lucy Camp’s new album still carries this influence. S’Mores Vol. 1—set to drop on Bandcamp on Cinco de Mayo and Spotify on June 2—plays as a sticky, sexy, powerful and sometimes tender rap ratification of an id stuck in the daily grind.
For as fiercely declarative as she is on the album, in conversation, Camp is reflective and humble. She credits the production of S’Mores Vol. 1 to the support of her Patreon community.
“It’s like an OnlyFans for music,” Camp jokes about the crowd-supported subscription service. “Except, you know, obviously instead of that it’s music every month.”
Camp produced the tracks on S’Mores as monthly singles for her subscribers.
“They get to stream the song and get access behind the scenes. I try to put together what I can, cuz I’m also working like a full-time job. In the process, I feel like it’s allowed me to put my stress into the music. I think the reason I’ve remained so consistent is because it’s been received so positively.”
Owing to the manner in which the tracks were produced and released, Camp considers S’Mores a mixtape. However, like any good mixtape, the album (organized by her producer Peter Anthony Red) is not without its internal logic.
“I think you should always start with the banger. Then, it is like this,” Camp says, swimming her hand up and down. “Right? The wave. It’s gotta be built up and then down and up again.”
“When They Go High,” the first track on S’Mores, is certainly a banger. Camp is influenced by the chopper tradition out of the Midwest—a fast-paced, syllable-packed style of rapping with a complicated rhyme scheme. It shows: she delivers her bars effortlessly. One standout: “I’m into blue and pink/I’m not what you would think/Spanish sí entiendo/But the language I don’t fluent speak.”
“The problem with chopping a lot of people have is making sense and not stumbling on their words. And I think that Latinos—not all of them, cuz my brother gets tongue tied—but, to a degree, you know how to use your tongue and roll your r’s. It just comes a little bit more naturally,” she says.
Lucy Camp has been compared favorably to artists like Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest, Common and Snow Tha Product, the latter of whom is also from San Jose and inspired Camp while in high school.
“She was definitely a person that I would see and respect and I still respect to this day. She’s really, really dope at what she does. She’s good. She knows how to rap.”
While she holds these giants—and others like Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Azealia Banks and Megan Thee Stallion—in high esteem, Camp’s goal in music is not necessarily “to blow up.” It is, instead, to make connections and to support herself through music. On her Patreon, Camp says: “There are people that believe in me. And that for me, is the goal. It’s never like to blow up, but for me to sustain, to support myself through music alone.”
Among her other supporters is her girlfriend, who encourages her vision and understands when she has to stay up late at night.
“For me, that does a lot. That’s big. I think that’s one of the biggest motivators: love. As cheesy as that sounds,” Camp says, laughing.
The hardest part of navigating her music career has simply been the time management.
“It’s incredibly hard. Capitalism is killing us all,” she says. “Trying to balance your passions and waking up at 9am and then working, working, working, coming home at 6pm and then trying to do music—it’s like juggling two full times.”
Still, she presses on. “Protection (feat. Glassmeadow),” the final track on S’Mores, opens with her signature, hard-hitting style. The song hits a false ending before surging back with a set of bright vocal harmonies. Then comes the refrain:
“I think it is time to start to live my life.”
Lucy Camp
Out Fri
Thanks for the new music tip!!!