Act II

Lil’ Flip once claimed to be “the first cat in Houston with a black McLaren.” Fifteen years later, after fiddling with some buttons and finally figuring out how to drop the top, Toliver tells me he’d love to put purple candy paint on this McLaren, now heading west down Holcombe Boulevard. N*E*R*D’s “Provider” is cranked up—the volume is already all the way up, but he keeps turning the knob—when he lists some of the cars he’s driven over the years. As Pharrell sings about “driving this truck down 95,” I learn that Toliver hit I-10 East to pick up his favorite set of wheels.

“My first car was a mid-90s black Cutlass Supreme, then I had an old black Pontiac Grand Prix, but my baby was a Chevy Yukon that I got from a friend in Louisiana. It had the big speakers in the trunk. It was lit.”

Toliver got his Cutlass after graduating from high school, around the time his best friend Josh moved into an apartment on Dairy Ashford Road and bought proper studio equipment. Josh took the stage name YungJosh93, Caleb became Don, and the two formed a duo called Playa Familia.

The next song in the queue is Toro Y Moi’s “Say That.” This is when Toliver really mashes the gas, trying to match our MPH with Toro’s BPM.

“I was on Toro crazy,” he says after bringing the car back down to a legal speed. “He’s my favorite. He took me to a whole other vortex with the music, man.”

“You send my life…” Toliver is singing the final line of Toro’s “So Many Details,” from Anything in Return, which dropped in 2013, the same year that Toliver and Josh began making music. “That took me over the top.”

We round another corner and pull into the alley behind Space Village, blasting Fat Pat’s “Ghetto Dreams,” the title track from the late rapper’s 1998 debut album. As we arrive at our destination, Toliver’s friends Chase B, Sickamore, Joe, Marley, and Jay walk out to greet us. The crew has made it to Houston, fresh from a listening party in New York City the night before, and I learn that the word of the day is “brolic.” Chase announces that “last night was brolic,” while Don tries on some new Space Village clothes, searching for the perfect fit for another release party tonight. The crew responds affirmatively with their own chorus of brolics. Now I want a squad to feel brolic with.

One thing that’s important to know about Don Toliver is that he keeps a lot of old friends around him. His old buddy Earl, for example, is in charge of throwing tonight’s party. And one thing you should know about his inner circle is that they’re not yes people. They’re just as quick to veto an outfit that doesn’t suit him as they are to tell him he just wasn’t cut out for the NBA as he bricks multiple attempts at the store’s pop-a-shot basketball hoop. (Chase made a store-record eight in a row, if you were wondering.) The outfit I’m rooting for doesn’t make the cut, despite Toliver’s accurate assessment that the jacket and tinted glasses combo, much like his Heaven or Hell album artwork “is some Fear and Loathing shit.”

Inside Space Village’s Orbit Cafe, we sit above a floor that’s made entirely of LED screens projecting cosmic visualizations while a young woman twists Toliver’s locs and we drink smoothies made by Travis Scott’s very sweet aunt Deborah. She tells us she had been in the restaurant business before and Travis asked her to come out of retirement to help run the cafe. As we sip on our smoothies, with Space City-themed names like Asteroid, Milky Way, and Sunny Screwed Up Day, Toliver introduces us to the pivotal third act of his story.