On his debut album, Lucasraps creates a space for the edginess he first displayed on the 2020 Blxckie collab “Big Time Sh’lappa” to play out. Each song captures moments in Lucasraps’ life and career, from suffering setbacks to rapping and hustling his way up in the competitive South African hip-hop scene. “Most of these tracks are from a lot of different times in my life,” Lucasraps tells Apple Music. “Now it's the time for me to release them.” Paying homage to the Durbanite’s upbringing, trials, and triumphs, 031 to the World fuses hardcore rap and raw energy (“Lucas Raps,” “Preach”) with more melodic, laidback vibes that see him bare his emotions (“Mud”), underpinned with production from new-age hip-hop heavyweights like Gemini Major, Christer, and Vaughan Fourie.
Version 2.0 adds two fresh tracks from the vault, plus new collaborations with AKA, Nadia Nakai, Nasty C, YoungstaCPT and Blxckie. Here, Lucasraps (Luke Duncan Malong) breaks down the inspiration for each track.
“Lucas Raps”
“The reason I called it ‘Lucas Raps’ is because Lucas really raps. The whole song is just made of me losing my temper sonically, because music is the only thing that I really express myself with. I was upset and I poured my heart out. And the whole song is also one take.”
“Project Mode Freestyle”
“The title speaks for itself. It's just setting the mood for what you're about to listen to. Sonically, we were just having fun with the sauce that we have.”
“South”
“‘South’ is pretty much a storyline of when I got kicked out the house. Not my parents’—just over some drama and things I went through in the industry; I learned my lesson about a lot of people and things. I’ve never really spoken about the situations that I went through. [This is] the first time that I addressed something that I felt like I needed to speak about.”
“Mud”
“‘Mud’ might be my favorite song on the project. I was at a show with Dr Peppa; the performance went crazy. Then when I went back to the section that we were chilling at, there was this other homie, gangsta-looking homie with face tattoos. He looked hectic. I walk up to the homie and he’s like, ‘Yo, dog, I f**k with you, I want to be a rapper. The problem is I’m poor.’ When he said that, it f**ked me up. I told him, ‘Freestyle for me.’ So, he freestyles. It wasn't super, super, super fire. But that still meant something to me as a rapper. Then I freestyled for him, and then he lost his mind and he was like, ‘Yo, dog, I f**k with you. Just keep it going, you’re my motivation.’ I left that gig, I went home, and I made ‘Mud.’ The song is literally for that one n***a.”
“Without Me”
“‘Without Me’ was from when I won the Sportscene and Puma [Put Me On] competition [in 2019]. I got to make the song with [producer] Gemini Major as part of winning the competition. It’s not me blowing my own horn or whatever, it's just me being real with myself, like it’s going to be tough for a lot of things if I'm not there.”
“Slide”
“‘Slide’ was produced by Christer. We were at the crib watching, I think, Travis Scott performances. I was thinking, ‘What song do I have that can f**king shake a crowd like that?’ I didn’t have one. To be honest, I don't know how I thought of everything. It just came to me, because I started with ‘Sippin' that lean Sprite, uh, bloody boy, I bleed on the mic.’ When I got to the ‘slide’ part, I wasn't even recording at that point, I was thinking of a hook. But then I accidentally said, ‘Slide, slide.’ We took that, and it became something. Then I added the ad libs.”
“Ammo”
“‘Ammo’ is one of the songs that I made back in, I think, 2019. This song was just me stating that I’m not a not a small laaitie in the game. I’ve watched n***as become superstars. I've been waiting in this line of understanding, patience, and all these things [for a while]. So, that was just me stating, ‘Yo, bro, ever since a youngin, I've been in this s**t.’
“Ouu U Nasty”
“‘Ouu U Nasty’ is for them bad bitches. I was wildin’ out in my life at that time, so I got to actually really understand what it felt like to be a bro that's in the life. So, I ended up just making a song called ‘Ouu U Nasty’ because there was a shawty that was coming with their vibes at the time. I just know I always talk about what I go through.”
“Jonny Dang”
“One day, I left the crib with Nash to the Def Jam Africa studios and then we looked in the mirror and like, damn, I had my grills on and I had so many chains on. Then Nash was like, ‘Yo, you’re like [celebrity jeweler] Johnny Dang, n***a.’ Then we were just freestyling. Then I came up with: ‘So I pull up on a shawty and I let my nuts hang.’ Then I was just rapping that s**t to the studio at Def Jam Africa. Then we get to the studio, he opens up his laptop, and then he makes this s**t.”
“Lucas”
“This is a banger. So when I moved into my crib, I realized some people weren't happy for me and all that. I wasn’t expecting that. Like I said, I express myself through music, so that’s what I went to. I was wildin’, like, what the f**k, bro? I just moved into a whole f**king mansion, legally, through just rapping, during [a pandemic]. How the f**k is that not amazing? That's all me.”
“Preach”
“‘Preach’ is another song I made in 2019. This was off the energy from winning the competition. This is when I first had a full understanding of my fanbase. I used to do these freestyle things on Instagram, and I'd go live sometimes. Every time I started, there was this homie who would comment, ‘It's time to preach, n***a,’ or some s**t like that. So ‘Preach’ came from that energy where I felt like I was actually rapping something with value.”