The Rest Is History
"End Times," courtesy of Angelo Mota, leroy and Mez, is a somber reckoning with our overwhelming reality — and a late-2010s NC hip-hop family reunion.

Last month, I flew to Massachusetts for a family reunion attended by more than 100 people, one that was organized not because nobody had seen each other in the past 10 years (although there was some of that), but rather because many of us had been seeing each other, just for the wrong reasons.
By a certain age, anyone with a large and somewhat geographically diffuse family knows the experience. Cousins who once descended upon Grandma and Grandpa’s house start families of their own, the homes of aunts and uncles become the regional family hubs that the grandparents once were, and large-scale gatherings increasingly happen for one kind of occasion: funerals. Invariably at these events, somewhere between questions about new jobs and kids’ ages, the sentiment is expressed, “It's great to see everybody, but I wish it were under better circumstances.”
That statement could easily serve as the subtext for “End Times,” the beautiful and winkingly morose track from Angelo Mota’s new EP Angelo Is Tired, which sees the rapper/singer/producer reuniting with erstwhile collaborators leroy and Mez — not for a celebration, not for a party, but for a group therapy session on the futility of modern life and the impending end of the world.
To casual listeners and newer fans, a collaboration between Mota (from West Orange, New Jersey), leroy (Charlotte, with stints in Chapel Hill) and Mez (Raleigh) may not immediately scream “family reunion” — none of the three share a label affiliation, and none have appeared together on a song in years — but to those well-versed in a particular window of North Carolina hip-hop history, that’s exactly what it feels like.
In 2014, with the heyday of Little Brother and the Justus League receding farther into the rearview, Triangle artists weren’t getting many looks from major outlets. That is, with the exception of Mez and leroy (then named King Mez and Well$, respectively), who were garnering the kinds of recognition the area hadn’t seen in years: Mez’s Long Live The King mixtape debuting on JAY-Z’s Life+Times website, leroy’s MTSYD: Revenge of the African Bootyscratcher earning a (mostly positive) review on Pitchfork. That summer, they marked the occasion with a joint song, “Youth In Revolt Pt. 2,” trading staccato-short verses over a rousing beat by Mez, Sipho The Gift, and Lomami. To call the song’s Pitchfork writeup a “review” strains the meaning of the word, but its existence nonetheless serves as a barometer for the pair’s standing at the time, as two of the most prominent indie voices in the state.
Mota’s NC connection would take root a year later in 2015, when he linked up with then-Chapel Hill-based label Immaculate Taste, led by leroy’s cousins, Mike Tambashe and Alec Lomami. Establishing himself as a producer on tracks like leroy’s “130” or his own “over here,” Mota would eventually release the solo albums House of Diamonds (2016) and When All Is Said and Done (2018). Asked by XXL in 2017 about a standout career moment, Mota recalled performing at Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, and said of enjoying his visits to North Carolina,“People see us different, we do shit differently, and we’re with Immaculate Taste who holds it down. I think those moments mean more than a song that has over 100,000 plays." While Mota departed from Immaculate in 2019, it wasn’t on bad terms — two years later, he and leroy came together for the smart, svelte joint album ZAÏRE, a surprise dedication (and namesake) for Tambashe’s newborn son. It doesn’t get more “all in the family” than that.
On “End Times,” Mota & Co. indulge in much of the same self-pitying, do-you doomerism that we’ve all by now gotten sick of hearing from one friend or another (or ourselves), but the trio get away with it for a reason that your friend probably can’t offer: they sound really good doing it. They also, as emotionally wide-ranging artists who’ve long been as comfortable amidst the melancholic as the fire-breathing and defiant, can’t help but balance the gloom with an undercurrent of heart and wit. Over subdued snares and a lumbering bass, Angelo recounts personal lows (“I got my prescription and the casa mixed up/ I lost everything, everybody switched up”), leroy asks deep, philosophical questions (“Would you save them all or would you save one?/ Would you take the call or would you hang up?”), and Mez demonstrates the lyrical ingenuity that makes him one of rap’s best writers, drifting effortlessly from aging to Saturday morning cartoons to the assault on Palestine (“Gettin older, gettin wiser… Thornberry, man I been Donny and I been Eliza/ Man them n****s trippin dawg, pray for Gaza”).
Nowhere in here is the blueprint for what we do next, besieged by the threats of war, climate change and authoritarianism such as we are. That doesn’t seem to have been within the “End Times” mandate. What is contained, however, is a glimmer of hope about the human spirit, and a bit of silver lining about the end times themselves: maybe they’re not so bad after all, if we get to spend them with our old friends.

Ryan Cocca is the founder/editor of Super Empty, a former furniture entrepreneur, and a daily flip-flopper on whether it's the end of the world. He (I) can be reached at ryan@superempty.com, or on Instagram at @youaintryan.