Album Review: As of Now by Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon

The Charlotte rapper’s latest mixes signing-day swagger with relationship paranoia, but the bravado keeps cracking under the weight of surveillance, suspicion, and taxed emotions.

Courtesy of Lex Records.

Counting your blessings and counting your enemies can sound identical when you talk fast enough. On this record, Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon does both simultaneously, cycling through airport terminals, matching Moncler fits, Instagram highlight reels, and old FaceTime logs with the same restless energy. He brags about being posted in the corner of a function where nobody recognizes him yet, then pivots to tallying which rappers in his city still have to dap him up with mixed emotions. He flies women out, all expenses paid, then threatens to cut them off the moment they post something shady. The flex and the grievance share a single breath.

Lex Records, the label name announced like a running joke throughout, becomes shorthand for arrival, though arrival at what destination stays unclear. On “I’m Signed to Lex Now I’m Up,” boasts pile quick: backstage sightings, thirty thousand feet in the air, half a million on the floor. Ad-libs interrupt with corrections and qualifiers, as if someone off-mic fact-checks in real time. When an interlude voice warns that nobody is about to use her, swagger cracks into something more defensive. He wants proximity acknowledged, yet he also wants you to know he sees through everybody who wants proximity to him.

Romance writing veers between saccharine and hostile without warning. “You Know My Love Language Right?” opens with resignation-letter talk and matching outfits, then closes with a threat to block someone on everything for cracking jokes at the wrong moment. “Texting This Fine Shit for a Month” begins tender, comparing a woman to Sandra Bullock, before sliding into accusations about DMs and stepped-on work. On “So You Really Don’t Miss Me?” the duet with Wild Recluse stages an apology demand that neither party fully commits to. He reads texts from 2020 and calls it a love forgotten, though forgotten by whom stays murky. A hook begs for an admission that things got ugly, while verses keep score instead of granting absolution.

Twin flame math dominates “Okay, I Know Who My Twin Flame Is,” where schedules conflict, time gets thrown away, and the phrase “girl okay” becomes a white flag raised three times in a row. October earned his hatred because of what slipped. Weight on his shoulders gets mentioned, then dropped. He admits putting out more than receiving, framing that confession as something too dangerous to post. Confessional impulse runs headlong into instinct to protect the brand.

Faith shows up as punctuation, never comfort. Bible hands on vows appear once; praying for a brother on trial gets a single bar on “Nah, You’re Mad Extra.” Praising God for crossing paths with Navy Blue sits in the same verse as owning that he hit his brother’s ex. The God talk comes quick and leaves quicker, a nervous tic rather than conviction, something to invoke when the math tangles.

The voicemail skit “Lord Jah-Monte’s #1 Supporter” features a caller who accuses him of gentrifying rap, lying about features, and talking down to people. Threats to stomp his gold teeth and take his government name turn personal fast. Whether staged or genuine matters less than how it recasts everything prior. All that king-of-Charlotte posturing now sits next to someone calling the paperwork fraudulent. On “King of Charlotte,” Deniro Farrar delivers high-energy while the ad-libs keep asking “king of what?” with genuine confusion, turning coronation into a joke the guest refuses to co-sign. Verses flaunt dark-skinned women and running plays like the Super Bowl, yet interrogation never stops. Sideline talk about clientele turning into fanbases and childhood sandboxes leaves the throne wobbling.

Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon shines the brightest when he just tells the truth. Drunk nights in Edgewood, sleeping in traps with a pillow on the floor, Crisis Center and Section Eight in the same bar as Instagram pics in Times Square. Autobiography buried in “Drunk Nights in Edgewood (IMYSM)” hits harder because it skips the victory lap. When he asks where his miracle is at the end of “Texting This Fine Shit,” stuck in a never-ending cycle of the same fuckery, the question cuts deeper than another Lex Records drop.

Solid (★★★½☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Drunk Nights in Edgewood (IMYSM),” “So You Really Don’t Miss Me?,” “Nah, You’re Mad Extra”