MY OWN FAKE FAKE SHORE DRIVE

The Midwest is a mystery to me. Chicago? Don't quite understand it. So it's New York with less assholes, more gun-related homicides, worse segregation, and horrible pizza? Y'all need to talk about yourselves some more. Get a Marty Scorsese for the promo department, Abel Ferrara if your money is short. But since half y'all rap bloggers never caught a body or pushed a key, I feel as qualified as anyone to discuss Chicago rap. Let's get it. Chuuuuuch.



RICO RECKLEZZ - KOOLIN IN HELL INTRO
This guy is definitely a moran, and he has those terrifying Joe Jackson devil eyebrows. His raps are hamfisted and catatonic. I used to sell drugs, that wasn't really my thing / Then I started robbin, like I hang with Batmane? Lol.

At times, however, an unremarkable rapper can come up with a line that isn't particularly clever or well written, but somehow embeds itself in your memory like the lyrical equivalent of an earworm. Trinidad James did it with, Pop a molly, I'm sweatin (Woo!). Bobby Shmurda did it with, I been sellin' crack since like the fifth grade! J. Cole did it, unfortunately, when he said, Dick so big, it's like a foot is in your mouth. That wasn't something I wanted to keep thinking about, but that's the nature of these things, you feel? Can't always choose what goes in the noodle. Rico Recklezz accomplishes this with the line, Fuck the bench / Coach, put a nigga in the game! The part about his sister getting shot is legitimately compelling. Add it to a nod-out beat that sounds like a goonish "Broke Boi," and we've got ourselves a 3/5 Mazda MPV blockbeater!



600BREEZY - 6IX HUNNED (FT. YOUNG $WAV)
600Breezy is one of Drake's regional rap friends, I guess? Ay Aubrey, you always welcome to write about your favorite internet discoveries on RAP MUSIC HYSGTERAI! We won't edit the soul out ya shit, jufeel? On "Guwop Flow," 600Beezy manages to capture some of the verbal peacockery of its namesake, but the comparison is ultimately the wishful thinking of an eager Daniel-san. What really excites me about this guy is he tapped the legend OJ Da Juiceman for three separate songs! That, and the fact he named his mixtape after George "Iceman" Gervin, suggests 600Breezy shares our reverence for marginalized rap stylists and pre-Jordan NBA history. Breezy, send me some clips!

BEFORE THE BANKROLLS: YUNGER MONEY FRESH

As much as I liked Bankroll Fresh's Life Of A Hotboy tape, it was little more than a workmanlike exercise in highly competent rapping.  Bankroll (nee Yung Fresh) got skills, but IDK if he has the personality to jump from good to great.  No one's expecting him to have the same charisma of Gucci, but on this 2013 Zaytoven jawn he gets killed on his own shit by Rocko channeling Plies.  The late, flamboyantly eye-patched Doe B also gets in on the action.  Side note: what are the odds that Doe B got shot by another eye-patched dude?  Eye for an eye for real; that's some Spy vs. Spy type beef.

This 2009 cut, again produced by Zay, finds Fresh rapping inna OJ Da Juiceman style.  It's always a good look to bite OJ, the most influential rapper of the past 10 years, but as a creative writing teacher might say, Bankroll, you need to put more of yourself in the work!

"Faces" has Yung Ralph and Fresh goin over yet another vintage Zay beat, with Gucci in the late So Icey Era.  Hearing the exuberance in Gucci's voice makes me miss 2008, before his work took a paranoid turn.  Someone gotta divide Gucci's shit into different eras cause he's on some Picasso shit like that.  Right now he sounds like he's rappin thru a down comforter after sleeping off five gravy-boats of Actavis.  He peeks thru the blinds lookin for thieves in the night, back aching cause he fell asleep on a 40 cal.  Gucci's Loner Period or his Grey Era?

DA CIPHER HEARD ROUND THE WORLD!

 

Oh shit dude, it been a minute ain't it?  But fo rilla, ya boy been locked up.  Got roped on some bullshit indecent exposure charges, but ain't you supposed to diddle yoself in a porno theatre?  I think it was all a set-up, 'cause the MAN wants to contain the dangerous truths I be leakin' on this website.

But yo, what I really came here to talk about is this legendary BET cipher featuring NICKI MINAJ, OJ DA JUICEMAN, and WAKA FLOCKA early in they careers.  I think it was '09 or something?  I dunno.  Dey was rollin fresh off the noise GUCCI MANE was kickin at the time; we talkin Burrprint and Cold War era, before the cocaine, before the ice cream face tat, before GUWOP!

At this time, WAKA FLOCKA and OJ DA JUICEMAN were just Brick Squad weed carriers hungry to eat the waffle cone crumbs from GUCCI's bib.  NICKI had yet to release an album.  Da Internet straight clowned dis cipher when it dropped, e.g. Who da fuck is these shortbus-ridin cretins?,  but let's revisit it with three years worth of hindsight and context.

Before this NICKI was mainly known for her breathy, unremarkable appearances on LIL WAYNE mixtapes.  When da Internet heard her new weirdo style in this cipher, they clowned her cause they wasn't ready.  It was a classic case of the SHOCK OF THE NEW, like when STRAVINSKY dropped his Rites of Spring mixtape and heads went nuts moshing and punching bitches.  We was all, "What the fuck girl, is you on crack?"  But now that we have been familiarized with NICKI's style, it don't sound as silly as it once did.  Yeah her performance is a bit awkward and goofy like she popped too many Valiums before grabbin da mic, but now it's just NICKI bein NICKI with a subpar delivery.

OJ has had a lower profile in recent years, but his verse is prolly the best of da three.  Just straight greazy ignorance.  He raps like a happy illiterate child and who are we to knock the special guy?  He's just a simple soul havin fun pretending to be a big bad cool rap guy.  Don't burst his bubble.

WAKA's verse is the strangest.  When you think WAKA you think energy.  It's fight music for when you've been smokin crack all night and wanna get antisocial.  But here he's just all sheepish and shy, as if his aunt brought him out at her bridge night and was all, "Joaquin, you're a rapper!  Sing one of your rap songs!" and instead of rappin in da trap with his Brick Squad Killas, he was forced to rap in front of nice middle-aged ladies eating crumpets and drinking Earl Grey who don't really understand what he's doin, but he loves his aunt and wants to make her proud so why not rap a few bars?

AN ELEGY FOR OJ DA JUICEMAN BY A DECEASED ROMANTIC POET!

So yo, one of da most beautifullest things I've learned in my time in the rap music trenches is that HIP-HOP HEADS come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.  I once had dis midget friend and to my surprise he was mad hip-hop!  Who woulda thought?

I thought I'd seen everything after I met a hip-hop midget, but I was wrong.  This cat Pasquale who lived down the street from me fancied himself a poet in the Romantic tradition.  He styled himself after LORD BYRON and wore mad poofy shirts.  We gots to talkin once and he started blatherin bout how BUSTA RHYMES embodied the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility" that them Romantic dudes was all about.  I was like, "Chuuuuuch!"

I ain't seen dis cat in years when I ran into his mother on da ski slopes.  She told me Pasquale had died in Tunisia.  He was thurrr teachin a coterie of young men about poetry and eroticism when he was taken by the consumption.  I was all, "Sheeeit, RIP."

She forwarded me a stack of his poetry.  Most of it was mad gay and not very hip-hop, but this one elegy for OJ DA JUICEMAN spoke to my soul (no homo).  In honor of JUICEMAN'S new mixtape, I thought I'd reprint this soul-tickler for y'all.

ELEGY FOR OJ DA JUICEMAN

OJ da Juiceman, where hath thou gone?  Your giddy "Aye! Aye! Okay!" no longer brightens the barbed paths and dark hallways of our wandering souls.  Your ooze of noble savagery has waned and O! we no longer thrill to your crudely enunciated verse.

What malady befell you?  Wherefore the absence and quietude? Beneath thy buffoonery was a depth the masses could not understand.  O, cruel fate of the visionary ones!  Disregarded in their time as common rabble.  Verily a kernel of gold amidst landscapes dreary you were.  The refuge of future glory is but a cold consolation for the insults you endured.

They cursed you as a plague upon culture, but soon they shall prostrate themselves before thy alter as they did with Van Gogh.  Your flame has diminshed, but Rejoice! -- your torch of genius burns eternal.