BURN DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE, RAISE THE BLACK HAND

In the pantheon of unanswered dis songs, K-Rino's "Fuck Eminem" is one of the more baffling entries. Ironic that the man formally known as Killer Rhymes Intellectually Nullifying Opponents would willingly allow himself to become a media stooge*. Curious, too, how he slowly morphed into the kind of rapper Eminem might have been without Dre: a political multisyllabicist rockin tinny over dollar-store Underground Rap™ production.

Yet his evolution into a purveyor of secrete knowledge and wisdom wasn't without precedent. Although Stories From The Black Book and Danger Zone aren't unrecognizable as Houstonian products, K-Rino is something of a regional anomaly, a rapping-about-rapping stylist of the "mystical lyrical scientist" school whose bloody-shirt street narratives and pulp cartoons betray the paranoid skepticism of the street prophet. I ain't mad that he now caters to the no-fun YouTube conspiracy theorists prone to sweat the Illumanti and bemoan the brainwashed sheeple of their generation. There's room enough for "Genius Of Love"-backed cartoon orgies in my world, but like Nas once said in a terrible dis song: K-Rino's just tryna kick the shit you need to learn tho.

*The logic of Benzino's scheme still escapes me. Did he think people would like him if they hated Marshall? Deep down, Raymond Scott is a playground bully who just wants to be loved.