Vince Staples didn't want to make a rap album. At least, not the kind people expected from a kid out of Long Beach who had just released the gritty, double-disc street epic Summertime '06. When the Vince Staples album Big Fish Theory dropped in June 2017, it felt less like a musical release and more like a glitch in the Matrix.
It was loud. It was metallic. It sounded like a warehouse rave in a dystopian version of Detroit, even though it was rooted in the existential dread of a young Black man navigating sudden fame.
Honestly, the "Afrofuturism" label gets thrown around a lot, but this project actually earned it. Most rappers use 808s and soul samples. Vince used industrial techno, UK garage, and Detroit house. He worked with SOPHIE—the late, legendary electronic pioneer—and Flume. He made something that people are still trying to catch up to today.
The Sound of Chrome and Concrete
If you listen to "Crabs in a Bucket," the opening track, you aren't greeted with a West Coast whistle or a boom-tap beat. You get this jittery, 2-step garage rhythm that feels like it’s vibrating at a higher frequency than human ears are used to.
Vince has always been a bit of a contrarian. He famously told The New York Times that he wasn't really a fan of "the 90s." He didn't care about the golden era. He cared about what was next. By bringing in producers like Zack Sekoff and Christian Rich, he created a soundscape that felt cold and sterile, yet incredibly urgent.
The beats don't breathe. They crush.
Take "Yeah Right," produced by SOPHIE and Flume. It features a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar, who is arguably the most "traditional" titan of the genre. But Kendrick has to fight the beat just to stay afloat. The bass is so distorted it sounds like heavy machinery breaking down in a factory. It’s abrasive. It’s meant to be.
Why the Big Fish Theory Keyword Matters Now
When we talk about the Vince Staples album Big Fish Theory, we’re talking about a turning point in how hip-hop interacts with electronic dance music. Before this, "EDM rap" was usually just cheesy pop-rap hybrids designed for Las Vegas pool parties.
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Vince did something different. He took the skeletal, darker elements of underground club music and used them as a mirror for his lyrics.
The title itself—Big Fish Theory—is basically a reference to the idea of being a "big fish in a small pond." But for Vince, the pond is his environment, and the glass of the aquarium is the fame that keeps him trapped while people stare at him.
"I'm just a guy. I'm not a hero." - Vince Staples to The Guardian, 2017.
He’s always been hyper-aware of the voyeurism of his audience. People want to hear about the violence of Long Beach. They want the "street" stories. On this album, he gives them those stories, but he wraps them in music that feels uncomfortable. It forces you to dance to his trauma.
A Masterclass in Subverting Expectations
The Guest List: You have Justin Vernon from Bon Iver singing on "Crabs in a Bucket." You have Ty Dolla $ign on "Rain Come Down." You have Juicy J doing ad-libs on "Big Fish." It’s a weird mix of people that shouldn't work together, but somehow, under the cold neon lights of this album, they do.
The Length: It’s short. Clocking in at just over 36 minutes. In an era where streaming was starting to encourage 25-track bloated albums to game the charts, Vince dropped 12 tracks and dipped. No filler. Just impact.
The Messaging: On "BagBak," he’s telling the president to suck a dick. He’s talking about the 1% and the 99%. He’s being political, but it’s not a "conscious rap" lecture. It’s a riot.
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The Technical Brilliance of the Production
The mix on this album is insane. Seriously.
If you play "745" on a high-end sound system, you’ll notice that the low-end frequencies are tuned in a way that feels physical. It’s not just a "beat." It’s a texture. Most rap albums at the time were leaning heavily into the "Metro Boomin" style of trap—which is great—but Vince was looking at the Bristol scene in the UK.
He was looking at the experimental pop world.
The song "Homage" is a perfect example. It has this pulsing, urgent synth line that sounds like an alarm going off. Vince’s flow is rapid-fire, almost robotic. He’s syncing his human voice to the machine. It’s the sound of someone trying to maintain their humanity inside a digital cage.
Misconceptions About the "Experimental" Tag
A lot of critics at the time called this an "experimental" album.
Vince hated that.
To him, it wasn't an experiment. It was just music. He argued that Black music has always been about innovation and that the box people put rappers in is a form of segregation. Why is it "experimental" for a rapper to use a house beat, but it’s just "pop" when a white artist does it?
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He was right.
The Vince Staples album Big Fish Theory is a Black electronic album. It’s a continuation of the lineage of Detroit Techno and Chicago House—genres founded by Black artists that were eventually "whitewashed" by the global festival circuit. Vince was just reclaiming the sound.
The Impact on Later Projects
You can see the DNA of this album in a lot of what followed in the 2020s. When JPEGMAFIA or Danny Brown push the boundaries of what a "rap beat" can be, they are standing on the ground Vince cleared.
Even Vince himself eventually moved away from this sound. His later self-titled album and Ramona Park Broke My Heart are much more melodic, stripped-back, and "traditional." This makes Big Fish Theory feel like a strange, beautiful island in his discography. A moment in time where he decided to see how far he could stretch the genre before it snapped.
It never snapped. It just expanded.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Listener
If you’re revisiting the Vince Staples album Big Fish Theory or hearing it for the first time, don't just put it on in the background while you're doing dishes. It's not "lo-fi beats to study to."
- Listen with high-quality headphones: The panning and the sub-bass layers in tracks like "Rain Come Down" are lost on phone speakers.
- Watch the music videos: The visuals for "Big Fish" and "Rain Come Down" are essential to the aesthetic. They use a specific color palette that matches the "cold" feel of the audio.
- Research the SOPHIE connection: Understanding how SOPHIE approached sound design—using synthesis to mimic real-world materials like metal and plastic—makes the tracks she produced on this album (like "SAMO") much more fascinating.
- Contrast it with Summertime '06: To truly appreciate the jump Vince made, listen to "Norf Norf" and then immediately play "Homage." The growth in two years is staggering.
Vince Staples showed that you don't have to be a "conscious rapper" to be smart, and you don't have to be a "club artist" to make people dance. You can just be honest. And sometimes, honesty sounds like a broken machine in the middle of a thunderstorm.
The album remains a blueprint for any artist who feels stuck in a box. It's proof that you can change the pond you're swimming in, provided you're brave enough to jump.
To fully grasp the influence of this project, track the production credits of major hip-hop releases from 2020 to 2025. You will see an increasing number of electronic and "hyper-pop" producers entering the space, a trend that was arguably solidified by the risks Vince took here. Check out his 2024 album Dark Times to see how he has integrated these avant-garde sensibilities into a more mature, acoustic-leaning sound.