Queens-based rapper Deem Spencer sees his records as snapshots. He explored a heartache-shaped persona on his 2019 full-length breakout, Pretty face. He dove headfirst into collaboration on the coming-of-age 2023 LP, adultSW!M, followed by a pair of “one producer, no features” EPs in 2024 and 2025, returning to the bold, instinctual simplicity of his DIY days. Each release brings self-discovery, evolved musicality, and, he adds with playful resignation, “pain and the people around me.” The phrase strikes him as a summary for love and life as an artist, for the flourishes of beauty and disappointment that color the human experience. Pain & the people around me, his new LP on art-forward label drink sum wtr, finds Deem at his best above sharp and vibrant instrumentation, reaching across genres for redemption, heartfirst and with crystalline precision. “This album is the clearest I've ever sounded. The clearest I've ever executed my vision,” he says. “I feel realized as an artist. I'm a fan of mine all over again.”

The refreshing, uncomplicated sound of Pain & the people around me starts with Deem’s chance encounter with producer Elie Bashkow at a local smoke shop. “This was completely out of the ordinary for both of us. For one, Elie doesn't usually smoke, and I don't usually speak to strangers...we always say that something outside of us brought us together. We chopped it up, found out that we both make music, and agreed to link.” Sessions were split between Elie’s Brooklyn studio and Deem’s house, and the music came together quickly. Deem had brought an album’s worth of material but abandoned it all after their first experiment together. “I realized that I needed to take advantage of the fresh energy; I just knew we needed to explore that.”

That first session became the album opener, “Persist,” an alt-pop burner that crosses ruminating guitar lines with towering distortion. Deem peppers sweet, unlikely rhymes against the beat like “ooh, I miss you. How is you? How blissful, god bless.” His clever flow is the central force of Pain, while Deem welcomes potent bars from friends in select places: fellow Queens rapper Slyy Cooper lights up the back half of “all my prayers”, Chicago’s Fresh Waters (of Pivot Gang) gives “idky” a pointed lyrical jolt, and North London’s Brian Nasty breathes fire into “someone.” The latter track, the closer, embodies the redemptive tone of the whole. Delivered in casual clarity, Deem outlines the grind of rapping for a living: “I obsess about becoming the best cause I can be / I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to this message, I been next up forever…”, giving way to a sun-kissed hook and then Brian’s thundering verse. 

Supremely hooky standout “everybody want me but my lover” features Deem in his feelings but having fun, in conversation with Will Evans’ inspired trumpet playing. “I just kept bringing the beat to my homegirl's house,” he explains. “Just spinning it over and over, like, what should I say on this? That hook came first, and I was just thinking ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s classic pop. Real gay, cocaine music. That song is special, I hope a lot of people hear it.”

For “heart don't know”, Deem and Elie tapped Aviad Poznansky on co-production. It’s an airy, shuffling track built on a bed of birdsong, shimmering keys, and warm bass, with Deem oscillating between a falsetto chorus and lower, heady verses, waxing on the confusing fluidity of love: “I was tore up / Loving you like Minnie Ripperton / I was on one / Love you like the ocean love the sun / I could go on / Sometimes I hate you / Sometimes I love you / Sometimes my heart don’t know.” 

Pain & the people around me is filled with such contrasts, drawing power from vulnerability. Deem’s always been good at this mode, where abstraction meets introspection, but here, he’s unlocked his most direct means to deliver the message. It’s a cloud-parting, culminating sound, a rightful reintroduction from one of contemporary hip-hop’s most distinct minds.