It's hard not to see Not For Sale as a pivot point for Chicago area MC Femi Adigun, better known as Femdot. Production-wise the album is miles away from his DJ Premiere-esque tribute to hip-hop's second golden age, 94 Camry Music, and it doesn't even seem to draw directly from the gritty, drill beats of his debut LP Delacreme 2. Rather, Not For Sale feels like the first album where Femi is staking his claim in a definitive style that is unique to his skills and vision. Instead of simply demonstrating his aptitude with the tools others have handed him, he's drawing up his own blueprints and following them to the letter.
The impetuous for this leap into newly charted waters is outlined on the track "Funds/broke[n]interlude," where Femi is honest about his struggles with liquidity and self-respect in the form of a confession to a former lover, an admission that hang on lines like, "Supposed to be your Superman but can't even afford the cape." The track ends with a "skit" where wisdom is dispensed like change in an empty Starbucks cup (just enough to get you by), and Femi rhapsodizes about the bridge that binds freedom and vulnerability, and the importance of not letting others define who you are, or who you are going to be.
It's an exemplary track of what Not for Sale is bringing to market, constructing its beat out unorthodox samples, like an oaky and acoustic, late '90s college rock guitar riff, and exhibiting a sort of strivership that aims at autonomy and self-understanding in a back-pack rap kind of fashion. It's a far cry from the conspicuous, fast-money hustle often valorized within the genre. It's not that Femi has a problem with that style of rap, mind you (see: 94 Camry Music); it's just it doesn't describe Femi or who he wants to be.
Freedom is the banner theme of Not for Sale, from the neo-gospel and deep soul tracked, and plunderphonic static infused intro and title-song, on through to "Sacrilegious / Pray Pt 1." and "Mueen / Pray Pt 2." where he wrestles with is own shortcomings and past, while lamenting over the extent to which money rules everything around him, but doesn't motivate, and often interferes with, his life and work; all to a deep bass, R'nB creep on the former part, and a hollow, earthen rhythm on the latter. If you think that he is going to allow society's expectations that he sell himself and his labor to the lowest bidder, or his peers expectations that he live chasing some gaseous, green pipe dream define him, then I'm going to need to refer you back to the title of this album. His life is not for sale, rent-to-own, or lease; make not offers and post no bills.
I can really feel Femi reaching for, and often finding, clarity of purpose and mind on Not For Sale, in a way that I haven't heard on his previous albums. Witnessing the effort and achievement of such an endeavor is very impressive. It's like watching a new breed of butterfly emerge in a brilliant presentation of sonic, multichromatic metamorphism. Kendrick might have pimped out his winged beauties before setting them loose upon the world, but Femi is building his from the ground up, and he isn't about to inhibit their flight or weigh them down with any attachments to false idols.
Not for Sale was self-released through Femi's own Delacreme Music Group.