Rory Allen Philip Ferreira retired his milo alias in 2018, emerging in 2019 as R.A.P. Ferreira, a play on his name. Under the new moniker, he’s emphasized rapping as independence in action. His Biddeford, Maine storefront and his record label, Ruby Yacht, embody that ideal in structural ways, but his music has always been the proof of concept. On Purple Moonlight Pages he fully embraces his blueprint, rapping with an irresistible freedom and joy so that others may follow.

He’s been a rigorous technician since his earliest releases, but as Ferreira he’s more free spirit than showboat. Produced by the Jefferson Park Boys, a Cali jazz trio comprised of producers Kenny Segal, Mike Parvizi, and Aaron Carmack, the record’s mood is beckoning and whimsical. Purple Moonlight Pages is an obstacle course of shifty rhythms, twinkly brass and keys, and gales of noise that Ferreira waltzes, bops, and struts through. Instead of loops, the Jefferson Park Boys provide lively dynamos that lurch and sway like Howl’s Moving Castle. Ferreira has worked closely with Segal for half a decade, and the Jefferson Park Boys provided a beat on his last album as milo, but the production here is wayward, more frayed.

Ferreira tackles the implicit challenge with poise, dueling with horns, humming to chords, springing off the downbeat. There's always been a dexterity to his writing, which is intricately syllabic and layered, but here even the knottiest schemes feel casual and loose. “This beat sound like a long walk to the dumpster/Funk like nostrils of muenster/Made myself an apostle of wonder,” he raps on “OMENS & TOTEMS.” On “NONCIPHER,” he ties references to Aquemini and The Wire into a Dadaist bow: “Tell yo’self that ain’t odious, ock/It’s only obvious/That’s bogus whoadie, I’m Bodie Broadus/Singin’ Spottie Otie.” His rhymes have the zip of epiphanies, off-the-cuff yet fully composed.

Ferreira’s raps feel built for private delight as much as public spectacle. When he raps something like “Mister lime rickey, tickin’ off beat/Parseltongue-like feet” or “In Tim Hortons, dressed like a Transformer/Talking ’bout Jacob Lawrence portraits,” his word choices are appreciable for both their meaning and their mouthfeel. He lacks the quantum unpredictability of Young Thug, but he feels equally unbothered, prioritizing fun and caprice over structure. “Ambiguity defeat the pattern recognition,” he says on “RO TALK.” and it’s the closest he comes to spelling out his strategy.

One of the starkest shifts here is Ferreira’s warm and puckish demeanor. “LAUNDRY” is a bouncy ode to chores. Instead of the wife-guy strain of J. Cole’s “Folding Clothes,” Ferreira leans into the endearing corniness of domestic bliss: “I’m just humming in the kitchen/My son listening/He’s staring at me with them wide ole eyes.” On “LEAVING HELL,” he ambles out of meter to share an anecdote about a time he pooped at a gas station and read a two-part exchange about the purpose of life that was carved on the stall. As milo, he favored a cold deadpan that lent itself to searing humor and heady metaphysics but lacked the whimsy and joy on display here. His newfound warmth makes his sermonizing feel informal and intimate, like he’s sharing advice while cutting your hair.

Purple Moonlight Pages follows in the footsteps of recent records like Some Rap Songs, Red Burns, and When I Get Home, which, to different ends, used jazz’s esoteric rhythms in service of fostering community and self-recognition. Jazz has long been an easy refuge for artists seeking to mine a sense of black authenticity or to signal a “refined” palette, but these records don't feel born of posturing. Instead, they are attempts to unspool and unlearn, to map the future by probing the past.

What’s missing from the record is a sense of interaction with the larger world. Ferreira’s self-possession and nimbleness play out in his performances, but his acrobatics rarely engage with rap outside his indie sphere, in lingo or in form. Compared to JPEGMAFIA’s web trawling or even the anthropological noir of fellow Kenny Segal collaborator billy woods, Ferreira feels like he’s on an island. While he never claims himself the GOAT and has repeatedly said he’s happy to be underground, his freedom feels conditional. Purple Moonlight Pages shows him at ease. What does he sound like under pressure?