With the proliferation of cheap recording equipment and the ease of finding the right software and release platforms, it’s rare these days to hear a new artist who’s fully formed from their first available song. But little about Roddy Ricch is typical. The Compton native, who grew up acutely aware of his city’s hallowed place in hip-hop history—but immersed himself in the work of hyper-skilled rappers from elsewhere, like Lil Wayne and Meek Mill—was still a teenager when he dropped his debut mixtape, 2017’s urgent, often mournful Feed tha Streets. And yet from its opening moments he sounds in total control of not only his elastic voice but also his perspective as a writer, one plagued by tragedy but determined to move forward. Throughout Feed tha Streets, Roddy makes thoughtful use of minor-key pianos—not as a signal of introspection that stops the proceedings to highlight a single, contemplative track, but as a texture to be folded into half a dozen different arrangements. The effect is a sadness that lingers, even over songs that are otherwise triumphant (“Free Game”), seductive (“Uber”), defiant (“Quality”) or playful (“Fucc It Up”). One way to read this is as a nod to the traumatic memories that wend through his writing; another is to reframe all these harrowing stories as variations on a theme, underlining instead Roddy’s technical ingenuity in being able to render them in so many different ways. Either way, listeners did not have to wait to hear an artist in full command of his considerable talents. Every chorus and verse on Feed tha Streets is shot through with melody. Roddy continually shows that he is simultaneously an uniquely fluid vocalist and an uncommonly considered writer; he does not lose a bit of lyrical precision when he bends those words into novel new shapes, nor does he curb his pop instincts when telling grim tales of Compton. From the beginning, the recipe was just right.