Limitle$$ Rob & The Skateboard Revolution

by J Joseph

The wind is blowing mildly. It’s a warm day in New Haven—really warm for the tail end of winter. It’s the type of day that feels like skateboarding and feels like music. Sitting next to me in the backseat of a parked white sedan is native New Haven rapper and skateboarder Robert Folson, known professionally as Limitle$$ Rob (pronounced “limitless”). We’re looking out the window at our friends skating in New Haven’s only skatepark, Edgewood (affectionately referred to as Edge of the Wood by locals).

Folson, 18, is two mixtapes deep into his fully independent musical career, and currently working on a third. His music is both solidly crafted and something of an anomaly. As Limitle$$ Rob, he focuses on experimental hip-hop, meshing retro New York-style beats with new-age electronic sounds to craft mixtapes that sound like collages of various hip-hop influences. His lyrical flow (the rhythm of his raps) feels like that of the East Coast, but it’s hard to place a strong comparison; it’s not exactly a New York flow, and it isn’t really Philadelphian at all. This works in his favor, though, as having no comparable geography allows his style to define itself as uniquely Connecticut.

“It started right after my mom passed, and skateboarding was the only outlet I could do. Like, after I skated, I would go home and be sad as hell,” he tells me, recounting how he got started in music. A friend (who would go on to become Filo$opher of the rap group High Karupshin), suggested that they both start rapping as an additional outlet. Folson recalls: “I just fell for it, like, the first day. It was a whack rap, but I just loved it so much that I kept doing it.”

Over the last year and a half, his continued work on music and his skating have put in him in an interesting position in some ways comparable to Prince. That is to say, they dress oddly, they both have an affinity for the color purple, and they’re both backed by a Revolution.

“CT is really about to be the next place where everything is getting put together, like in New York,” Rob tells me, as he ecstatically makes hands gestures. It’s something he obviously and truly believes, adopting the tone of a thoughtful idealist, oozing with passion. He is referring to the growing collective of skateboarders, musicians, artists, models, photographers, and filmmakers of the city who have been collaborating with and supporting one another over the past year.

At the core of this movement are four New Haven-based skateboard companies: Acid Wood Skateboards, Loo Wax Co., After Vibes, and Tough Sheet Griptape. Acid Wood, the first of the four to come to fruition, was started by Folson while he was still in high school, and has helped set the precedent for the unity that the companies are built around.

“That’s really how you make it out; you gotta work together,” he says, talking about the collective. It’s tough to argue with that, considering the progress that the companies have made working together. Each owned by a skateboarder from a crew that started out together (a crew that I am admittedly a member of), the companies have become the it focus of the Connecticut skate scene. More importantly though, they’ve been using this standing to promote musicians, among other artists.

For Rob, there is no separation between music and skateboarding. “They’re the same thing. Like, I can’t skate without music; and without music, sometimes I don’t think about skating. Like, I have to do both so that I can get into a certain state of mind where it’s like I can focus on both.” It comes as no surprise, then, that he uses Acid Wood’s social media to promote other artists from Connecticut, such as hip-hop trio High Karupshin and fellow skateboarder and rapper T-Coop. And even less surprising is his collaboration with one of the skaters he sponsors, Anthony Lamb, known in the music world as A Sound.

One of the most fascinating elements of the collective (and one that really embodies the underlying ideology) is the range of musical stylings present. Limitle$$ Rob’s experimental sound is offset by more focalized artists such as A Sound, who has a similar lyrical approach, but is more sonically concise, neglecting the experimental beats for a more flare-filled West Coast sound. In complete contrast is High Karupshin, a hip hop group from West Haven, Connecticut, with heavy-handed beats that sound like the stuff of nightmares. The group, composed of Filo$opher (pronounced philosopher), Bvby $lurge (Baby Slurge), and Txgh Dye (Tie-Dye), focuses on a raw sound they call “karuptro” that may be best described as post-horrorcore. Yet it subverts its predecessor with an authenticity that lets you know they’re not just saying crazy things to say them—there’s a point.

The music of this scene is all very well developed in this way. That is, everyone knows what they want to look and feel and sound like. The focus makes for really powerful moments, like Folson’s first EP Undeceived, in which he capitalizes on the old school beats to capture a sense of youth and nostalgia while he talks about his journey mourning and remembering his mother. While the music sometimes does have pitfalls, such as the unpolished sonic aesthetic that hangs over some of Folson’s latest mixtape Welcome To, and some under developments in flow on the part of A Sound, these are more the signs of growing artists than bad artists. Both Limitle$$ Rob and A Sound (along with High Karupshin, and others) are a part of the development of the sound of mainstream Connecticut hip-hop, and that comes with growing pains, but it’s exciting to see where that development leads.

As for support, the other companies in the collective have been actively trying to help the artists in this scene grow. “It’s all love,” says Austin Reardon, founder and CEO of Loo Wax Co. It’s completely visible, too, as he’s been using Loo Wax’s social media to help promote A Sound (who incidentally also skates for Loo). In addition, the plans for future skateboard competitions hosted by Loo include performances from local musicians, and the feature-length Loo Wax skateboarding video (expected by the end of next year) is planned to include music from as many local artists as possible.

Beyond just the musicians, Loo Wax and After Vibes have been actively trying to give artists in the community a space to hone their craft. Instead of relying on one videographer, Loo Wax has been outsourcing to as many in the community as they can. Similarly, Nervens Conte, founder of After Vibes, has been using his company as a space to let graphic designers grow. He describes it as a brand where artists can “do their own thing, and not just look for handouts.”

This sentiment in a lot of ways embodies this movement as a whole. The collective is a group of highly motivated people working tirelessly on laborious projects, if for nothing else but to provide a space for each other to grow together. It’s as much about hard work and dedication as it is about skateboarding and artistry.

“I want to be able to help everybody out,” says Folson. “So, like, what Imma do is just—Imma build. I want to build. I have to build.”