For as in-demand as Clams Casino has been as a hip-hop beatmaker, though, the music works equally well, if not better, divorced from a lyrical context. In 20, respectively, Volpe compiled a series of instrumental beat tracks into a pair of instrumental mixtapes, highlights of which showed up on albums and mixtapes by A$AP Rocky, Main Attrakionz, Lil B and numerous others. And though hip-hop certainly hasn’t ever shied away from psychedelia, Clams is known for a signature kind of sonic trip - one that can feel like it moves at the pace of molasses, yet knocks all the same. It’s slow and dreamlike, thick and syrupy, and more than a little disorienting. Clams, aka New Jersey-based beatmaker Mike Volpe, has the kind of aesthetic that can take years to cultivate. But it took the ethereal, ganja-smoke-laced beats of Clams Casino to get him there.

Technically, Lil B coined the term, once vocalizing his own aim to make music that sounded like a castle floating in the clouds.

“ Cloud rap,” as ephemeral a genre as it is, wouldn’t exist without Clams Casino.