'to live and die in end user license agreements' is Rhys Langston’s return to rap form, a multi-producer album following years of self-produced “genre abolition” and pushing the melodic boundaries of alt-rap. In these 12 new tracks he playfully and artfully asks us to consider whether the pretense of a social contract has been replaced by the omnipresence of end user license agreements. Rapping like the canary in the data mine, he takes on the mundane and grandiose alike, as is the nature of life when software mediates the everyday and tech boardrooms accelerate the death throes of monopoly capital.
Even with such high concept aims, 'to live and die in E.U.L.A.' still puts Rhys Langston’s musicality and idiosyncratic songwriting center stage: like his ear for tender melodies on the break-up rap ballad, “it’s the fade out”, or on the trip-hop-inflected title track, where he tries to “stare down the inflection point at its zenith.” Ever the satirist and surrealist, songs like “I woke up feeling like an anti-zionist Rube Goldberg” and “I’m running for senate” indulge in a sharp irony set against the growing erosion of civil liberties and ubiquity of surveillance technology. And counterbalanced with the earnest personal touches of “my grandmother’s pecan tree” and “shy feet in unstressed syllables”, this collection of songs might just prove to be the clearest distillation of Rhys Langston’s rap prowess in his now 21 project catalog.
Just over a year removed from his shapeshifting Pale Black Negative album, the clip of Rhys Langston’s musical poetry remains nearly at pace with the impossible speed of digital bread and circuses. Indeed, as he once rapped on his 2024 song “I merit a close reading”, he is a “large language model breathing / super-conducting symphonies of accumulated reasoning.”
credits
credits
releases October 9, 2026
written, performed, mixed, with additional production* by Rhys Langston
recorded Dec 2024 - May 2026
beats by BLOOMCYCLE, Dick Chainey, pty, Rhys Langston, roper williams, SINAI, qnorapname, Ya Boy Pax
featured raps by Dick Chainey, Kwame Adu, nahhphet, Old Grape God, Open Mike Eagle, Phiik, PremRock
*clarinet and synthesizer on "shy feet in unstressed syllables" and guitar on "to live and die in E.U.L.A." by Rhys Langston
art by Rhys Langston
mastered by Ya Boy Pax
*****THIS IS A PRE-ORDER, VINYL WILL SHIP APPROX. END OF NOVEMBER 2026*****
'to live and die in end user license agreements' is Rhys Langston’s return to rap form, a multi-producer album following years of self-produced “genre abolition” and pushing the melodic boundaries of alt-rap. In these 12 new tracks he playfully and artfully asks us to consider whether the pretense of a social contract has been replaced by the omnipresence of end user license agreements. Rapping like the canary in the data mine, he takes on the mundane and grandiose alike, as is the nature of life when software mediates the everyday and tech boardrooms accelerate the death throes of monopoly capital.
Even with such high concept aims, 'to live and die in E.U.L.A.' still puts Rhys Langston’s musicality and idiosyncratic songwriting center stage: like his ear for tender melodies on the break-up rap ballad, “it’s the fade out”, or on the trip-hop-inflected title track, where he tries to “stare down the inflection point at its zenith.” Ever the satirist and surrealist, songs like “I woke up feeling like an anti-zionist Rube Goldberg” and “I’m running for senate” indulge in a sharp irony set against the growing erosion of civil liberties and ubiquity of surveillance technology. And counterbalanced with the earnest personal touches of “my grandmother’s pecan tree” and “shy feet in unstressed syllables”, this collection of songs might just prove to be the clearest distillation of Rhys Langston’s rap prowess in his now 21 project catalog.
Just over a year removed from his shapeshifting Pale Black Negative album, the clip of Rhys Langston’s musical poetry remains nearly at pace with the impossible speed of digital bread and circuses. Indeed, as he once rapped on his 2024 song “I merit a close reading”, he is a “large language model breathing / super-conducting symphonies of accumulated reasoning.”
credits
credits
releases October 9, 2026
written, performed, mixed, with additional production* by Rhys Langston
recorded Dec 2024 - May 2026
beats by BLOOMCYCLE, Dick Chainey, pty, Rhys Langston, roper williams, SINAI, qnorapname, Ya Boy Pax
featured raps by Dick Chainey, Kwame Adu, nahhphet, Old Grape God, Open Mike Eagle, Phiik, PremRock
*clarinet and synthesizer on "shy feet in unstressed syllables" and guitar on "to live and die in E.U.L.A." by Rhys Langston
art by Rhys Langston
mastered by Ya Boy Pax
*****THIS IS A PRE-ORDER, VINYL WILL SHIP APPROX. END OF NOVEMBER 2026*****
Image 1 of 2
Image 2 of 2