Written by u/AyoRet

Artist: Thes One Album: Farewell, My Friend (+ Farewell, My Friend: Footnotes)

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Please note: Farewell, My Friend: Footnotes is a follow-up vinyl-exclusive record that is not available on streaming.

Background: People Under the Stairs – the beloved Los Angeles underground duo, consisting of Christopher Portugal (Thes One) and Michael Turner (Double K) – accrued a dedicated fanbase through years of well-regarded releases, a relentless touring schedule, and an unfailing love for classic hip hop and the samples that influenced it. The duo disbanded in 2019, citing fatigue from touring. On January 30, 2021, Double K passed away in his sleep. After Thes closed the door to the studio where they created so many cherished songs, he returned to the studio last year and, working with a number of long-time collaborators, created Farewell, My Friend.

Review: 2023 marks twenty one years, today, since I began listening to Hip Hop, and in all of that time, I have never been able to say that I wish my favorite album, of any given year, did not exist. Albums about loss and mourning are not easy endeavors for any artist, nor their extended families, longtime friends, and even dedicated fans – I doubt many people listen to Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked At Me with their morning coffee. And yet, no album got more play from me this year than Thes One’s dedication to his longtime partner-in-rhyme, Double K. An album that is at once mournful and celebratory, it is an instrumental Hip Hop project which transcends the artificial limitations many place upon this sub-genre, managing to tell a life story with hardly any words, while simultaneously offering an empathetic ear to the listener’s own experiences of grief and the processing of grieving therein.

Despite the often-repeated complaints in this subreddit about AOTY write-ups which follow a track-by-track framework, Farewell, My Friend is hard to approach in any other way. Thes One has discussed how proud he is of this album as a development of his skills as an executive producer – this is not just a collection of beats, but a coherent narrative in instrumental form. The delicacy of such creative choices is seen even in the song titles, which take the form of longer descriptions which contextualize the music; in this case, a chronological understanding of the life of People Under the Stairs. After “It Was Meant to Be…” opens the album with words from Double K’s mother – words which both celebrate the group’s accomplishments, and explain the shock that came with K’s death from alcohol poisoning – a small sample of K describing the idea of PUTS transports the listener to the 80s, with “Young Mike and Chris Floating Free” taking us back to their childhood and teenage years.

The ultimate possibilities of this album are on full display with this track. Using a brilliantly flipped sample of Level 42’s Starchild, Thes One transports us to the carefree days of him and Mike digging through the crates, accidentally stumbling upon Level 42’s record thinking it had something to do with Bootsy Collins; though a mistake, the two of them fell in love with the record. The sample is flipped in such a way that, though the song is clearly for Thes to process the feelings of his/their youthful years, it extends a hand to the listener, as if to say “I feel you” in regards to the feeling that we all sometimes get – the desperate urge to return to a different, happier, more familiar time when we were “floating free,” or if not that, then at least the desire to go back in time to whisper (or yell) into the ears of our younger selves to cherish the time more carefully, before it’s gone. The song is a head-bobbing emotional wallop, and it begins the “happier” side of the album.

The following track, “90s Mike and Chris on the Porch,” is not as sonically intense as the previous track, but it serves a vital purpose. It is the prelude to their breaking through as rappers; its laid-back guitars and sample flips serve as the soundtrack to the day you had, sometime in a September or October of your late teens/early twenties, when you felt that feeling that you were on the cusp of a big change in your life, and yet, you couldn’t quite put your finger on how seismic the change would be, so instead, you tried to appreciate things as they currently stood. The duo are no longer floating entirely free – considering the difficult decision to pursue a rap career, and the feeling that this might (or might not) work, these possibilities all take their toll, the feeling of ambiguity lingering throughout the beat. The track ends with a sample of K talking about being the People Under the Stairs, the guys who were at the back of the club who then went home to do their thing, reminding listeners that they both knew each other before their own kids knew them – a bond that would be impossible to break.

It is that dedication to one another which makes “Mike and Chris Leave for their First Tour” so powerful. A triumphant sample of Patrick Adams’s “It Ain’t No Big Thing” is flipped and remixed to, instrumentally, tell the tale of PUTS performing in Japan for the first time, a high that Thes has said, in a Los Angeles Times interview, that the group chased ever since. The pure giddy excitement of worlds unknown, and the huge possibilities therein, is felt in every moment – it’s a bouncy, adrenaline-building song that defies, as best as possible, the sadness that comes with Thes’s realization that touring took a great physical toll on them both. Yet, neither of them would have changed the trajectory of their careers, the euphoria that came with their success and recognition. What we love can also take a great toll on us, a painfully pertinent reminder from a track that crystalizes Thes’s skills as a beat-maker.

For both members of PUTS, the decision to bring the duo to an end (even if they made clear they had not written-off the idea of reuniting, just without the impetus to tour) was made so that the group could spend more time with their families. It is this decision which brings about the one-two punch of the next tracks, starting with “Mike at Chris’ Bachelor Party in Rosarito.” A groovy, more downtempo track (of which I don’t know the sample, unfortunately), the song has an air of wistfulness. The duo so clearly celebrated each other’s accomplishments and personal milestones, but they were also reminders that the two of them were growing older, taking on new responsibilities, walking down new paths which could make it tougher to be the hardest-partying, hardest-working duo in Hip Hop. It is a track which reminds us that life’s beautiful new chapters are also, in some ways, the transformation of other, happy chapters in themselves.

The changing chapter, in this instance, is made clear in the next track, “Mike, Chris and Too Many Aeroplanes.” Over a sample of Ponderosa Twins Plus One’s “Bound,” expertly flipped with Thes’s classic boom-bap drum patterns, the listener can picture the moment in yet another airport when one of them turned to the other and asked “can we keep doing this?” It was a moment that was surely heart-breaking, both for whoever first asked the question, and for whoever answered by saying “I’m not sure.” The track builds by way of absence – the limited vocals on the track become harder to catch as the song continues on, the weight of touring taking an ever-greater toll until the sample comes back hard towards the end, the recognition of the need to bring about a new chapter of life having been brought to the fore, exemplified by the lack of drums being easily missed by the power of the sample in the song’s final moments.

Unfortunately, this chain-of-events would serve as a “Prelude to Pain,” which uses neighborhood church bells, which rang in the background of an interview with them both, to lead into a piano solo which prepares the listeners for “The Bell Tolls for People Under the Stairs.” Reworking Alex North’s “Love Theme From Spartacus,” the track uses its somber keyboard tones, thick bass, and bouncy drums to reflect the mix of emotions that one feels when one cannot continue on with what one has done for years, what one has derived tremendous pleasure from. Guitars which appear towards the end of the track are akin to the tears one sheds when they realize their body can no longer keep up with the ambitions of their mind. Yet, a sample of Mike at the end of the track makes clear to the listener that PUTS are Los Angeles B-Boys and family men. The essence of their lives, the genre they have contributed to over the years – none of that will ever truly leave them. The track celebrates the duo’s contributions to the genre, as well as everything the genre did for them, while also processing the immense sadness both of them must have felt in realizing the ending of the duo was not entirely, in a sense, in their control.

All of the tracks I have mentioned so far can, in one form or another, reflect one’s own grieving processes, reminding us of happy times, trinkets with meaning that only a certain bond between certain people can share, and the inevitable hardships which come with growing older. Each song is the soundtrack for Thes’s emotions, as well as the listeners. We can only be brought into Thes’s grief, and celebration, as far as he lets us, but each beat is constructed in such a way that we can take them into our own spaces of mourning and loss, recontexutalizing each track for ourselves. The only track which threatens this logic is “Midnight, January 29th: the Mothership Comes for Mikey.”

PUTS prided itself on a love for the old school, an insistence that there is value in the sounds of Hip Hop’s roots to this day. The duo never started beef with anyone doing a different type of Hip Hop sound, but they stuck to their roots, willing to stay in their lane for what they believed in. That approach was even reflected in Double K’s bedtime ritual, in which he would play a VHS recording of Mothership-Parliament’s 1978 Flashlight Tour while he fell asleep. The track transitions from a reimagining of Tiny Tim’s “What the World Needs Now” to a sample of the VHS – the very VHS that was likely playing in the background as he took his last breath. The track’s soft keys, alien-esque synths, and the sounds of the crowd as Mothership-Parliament plays out, all combine into a devastating picture of the last moments of a rap legend’s life, a reminder that though we can picture this moment, we will never experience the specific first-hand pain of his family who found he had passed away, the tape having been played one last time. Yet, the track reminds us of the uniqueness of each individual and their shared connections – there is some quirk about ourselves that will stay with our immediate loved ones after we have left this mortal coil, only understandable to a small few. The track also, in some ways, ponders how we build narrative to offer comfort to ourselves in such times, as if the track hopes that once the mothership landed back home, K jumped out to start exploring some alien dimension with all sorts of new samples to flip, beats to make, and things to rhyme about.

But while we hope that is what K is doing, Thes remains on this side of the mortal coil, likely grappling with a mix of emotions. The final track is aptly titled “Survivor Syndrome (We did it for Mikey).” Using the refrain “we did it for mikey” to build the track, Thes and co. remind us – and themselves – that there comes a day in which one remembers that we must move forward, if for no other reason than whoever we are mourning would not want us to be in such a state. Tight drums and catchy guitar guide the listener towards the ending fade out, in which acoustic guitars, finger snaps, and faint instrumentation take over, presenting the listener with the clear love that Thes had for his partner-in-rhyme. There is hope, there is love, there is a degree of peace in the track, even if it makes clear that this process of grieving will never quite be over, until every last trace of this mortal coil, itself, is over.

What is interesting is that the album could have ended on a somewhat similar, yet still different, note, and it is here where I must talk about Farewell, My Friend: Footnotes — a vinyl exclusive, of only 200 copies, which was sold for one-night-only at a concert with Wonderful Radio. Despite being listed as “not for resale,” I shipped my copy from Japan. It is the first vinyl I have ever owned – I will not deny how hypnotic it is to see the beautiful turquoise record spinning as it plays. I will describe the record’s two sides, as it is not available for listening anywhere online.

Side A begins with the Thes One Mix of “Survivor Syndrome” – the refrain of “we did it for mikey” is still felt in the track, but the energy is different. More somber, more constrained, more subdued; the drums are softer and the guitar is quieter. It is the second, quieter whispering of “we did it for mikey,” the afterword which drives home to the listener that the process of grieving is never over. It changes form, oscillating from moment to moment, but it never disappears. The track is then followed by “Sparrow”—we note, with the footnotes, that the naming of the tracks is different compared to the “main text” of the album. The track extensively samples the Marvin Gaye track of the same name, with a unique drum pattern that feels like an experiment for Thes. The lyrics that are sampled in the track transport one to a scene with Thes in the studio, in a state of existential meditation – what does nature, and the animals of said nature, know that we don’t? Is there something we’re missing, something that explains it all? Or is Thes just taking all of it in, bridging the beauty of Gaye’s classic with a different groove, keeping the tradition of PUTS going that is referenced at the beginning of the record? Whatever the case, side A closes with “Italian Balconies,” a short collection of longing synths, capturing the beauty one finds in a new world, one you never imagined you would see in your life.

Side B opens with “Everything She Wants,” likely a reworking of a song I am unfamiliar with. Bells and thick bass transform into melancholic instrumental flourishes that recall the last dance of the night before the bar closes, the disco ball spinning away. The mood continues with “Tender Love,” the type of mellow song that would close a Ralph Bakshi film as reunited companions must part ways once again. But as it seems like a possible overwhelming sadness may consume this side of the record, the final track, “Keep Reaching for the Stars,” breaks through. A truly beautiful closer, Thes uses his classic drum patterns, and one more sample I’m unfamiliar with, as a way to bring about the closing credits of PUTS, the scene of the film in which Thes looks to the sky, as K looks down from the heavens, determined to not let grief become an all-consuming, a destructive force. They accomplished a hell of a lot, and as Mike’s mom puts it at the top of the album, “it was meant to be.” All there is to do now is, as the refrain goes, is to keep moving, keep laughing… keep reaching for the stars.

(I will note, briefly, that Thes also sold a 200-copy vinyl exclusive in Europe, containing a Dusted Out mix of “First Tour,” as well as an unreleased track with long-term collaborator DJ Day – the copy I ordered won’t be here in time for the review.)

For some reason, I can recall a daily discussion thread in which Mikeaveli complained that he did not see the value of instrumental hip hop, finding it too repetitive for his tastes. While I disagreed with his take whole-heartedly, I will grant one concession – instrumental hip hop has a hard time fighting against how it is used so often as background noise. Whether for our youtube videos, study sessions, nights of gaming, etc., instrumental hip hop is often pre-designated as music to serve as a backdrop, hardly given the opportunity to overtake everything else and call attention to itself. Farewell, My Friend refuses to be subjugated to such a status. It is too emotionally potent, too sure of its purpose, and too carefully designed, to be mere background noise for yet another video essay. One could try to talk, or even rap, over these beats, but I argue that such an act would be futile. The passion of these beats sticks out too much; the story behind them would demand to be heard over whatever was instead attempting to occupy the “empty” space of Thes’s production.

Farewell, My Friend is, in my opinion, one of the best Instrumental Hip Hop albums ever made – on par with Endtroducing, Donuts, Special Herbs, and other beloved albums in this sub-genre. Its sense of purpose is unparalleled, conveying entire lives in the space of 8 tracks and two interludes, acting as a loving homage that can be appreciated by long-time fans and first-time listeners alike. Thes, himself, showcases newfound skill as an executive producer, executing an overarching vision that was both personally important and necessary for laying to rest an essential underground Hip Hop figure. In a sea of instrumental albums that feel more like a factory line of small variations, the album asks beatmakers to approach their work with a renewed sense of focus and energy, a breath of fresh air for a sub-genre that, like anything in Hip Hop right now, faces accusations of over-saturation and a lack of innovation.

Most importantly, though, Thes pulls off the impossible – he provides a send-off to his partner-in-rhyme while also empathizing with any listener who is suffering from a similar type of grief, even if the specificities are never comparable. PUTS was an anomaly, even in underground hip hop; a DIY project through-and-through, an entity sure of its commitment to Hip Hop’s roots. Where artists like Buck 65 have commented that they took a much different approach to rap in the early 2000s and beyond, stemming from a sense of frustration with the trajectory of rap music, they appreciated PUTS for holding it down. No duo is likely to repeat a similar career trajectory, and so, in theory, this project should be entirely inaccessible, too difficult to engage with by virtue of the personal weight and specific memories that listeners cannot hope to know (nor, ultimately, should know). Yet, Thes not only lets listeners, however briefly, into this world of his memory, but he still speaks – by way of his production – generally enough that the listener will be able to conjure their own memories of the days of floating free, the weeks of working hard with a friend on a new ambition, the months of moving towards new chapters in life, and the years of experiencing one another’s successes and failures. For anyone who has lost a close friend, this is the type of record you can only play occasionally, and yet, it can become intoxicating, an album which encourages you to let go of your inhibitions and experience all of your emotions as you need. Few albums can pull off such a balance like this one.

At the end of Footnotes, K is still given the last word, a “check it out” reminding the listener of the ghosts of our lives, the incomplete thoughts and moments we wish could be completed. It is here where I will confess something. Despite writing this review as if I have been a longtime PUTS-head, the difficulty of accessing their music led me to put off tackling their discography for many years, ultimately until K’s passing had been announced. Finally tackling their discography was like going home again, as if I had returned to the days of playing Tony Hawk 4 in the living room during the summers of 04-06, my iPod blaring in the background as I had memorized the game’s soundtrack by that point. PUTS made the type of rap that I fell in love with, and even as my tastes evolved over the course of the blog era and beyond, their music would have been right up my alley throughout all of my years as a hip hop head – relaxed, fun, yet still banging. Farewell, My Friend closes a chapter for one of this genre’s best duos, but it ponders what might have been to come had the years of touring, partying hard, and grinding extensively not taken their toll. And even then, if Thes is right, Mike was right there in the studio with him as he made this album; in an interview with the LA Times, collaborator Kat 010 recalled that the instruments in the studio behaved erratically, going from sounding horrible one moment to something unique and interesting the next, as if Double K’s playful spirit still had to have some hand in the music. What better way to conclude one of the few long-standing duos in Hip Hop that never had a public fall out or years of inactivity – though one still wishes such a celebration happened on different terms.

RIP Double K. Forever, the P!

Questions/Discussion:

1) Are there any samples you are familiar with on this album, that I did not discuss in this review, which you think are worth noting?

2) The album obviously has some critique towards the structure of the music industry, in which touring is a life-line as payouts get increasingly smaller and smaller for artists. Is it time for a shift away from touring towards some other means for artists to make a healthier living?

3) For any longtime PUTS fans, what memories of them might you want to share with anyone else reading this writeup?