BALLGREEZY FAN PAGE

Who let these new kids in? I see them with their Thrasher shirts, prescription pills, and prostate-stimulating repetition. What happened to the days when Trick Daddy and Gunplay tried minting Florida rap with a lyricist's imprimatur? SoundCloud rap is just dexontextualized postmodern appropriation, which proves we've reached the end of culture. Right? Yes. No.

Cry if you want, or blame someone. Not Rick Ross - he exists in a geohistorical void of his own making. It's Spaceghostpurrp. Not just the father of all these reprobates, he is their direct link to the old school ("I'd bring Markese with me to the studio," Morrison says. "He'd just sit and watch Disco Rick work the engineering board. It definitely got Markese's attention."). Now we have a traceable lineage, now we have cause and effect, and we can sleep easily at night knowing that the problematic rock bricolage of a Xxxxtentacion isn't that far away from "Fuck Around The Clock" or "Do Wah Diddy", and Little Pump and Smoke PUrple circle around the same blown-out absurdist drain as "Let's Get Muthafuckin' Stupified" and "Smurf Rock."

Raider Klan inaugurated a distinct break from the half-thizzy club anthems of yesteryear (despite Denzel Curry honoring Bizzle on "Envy Me"). Whether this was a deliberate aesthetic choice, or an effect of generation gaps, urban sprawl, personal enmities, or insider/outsider industry politics, it marks a splintering - a rupture. Existing parallel to Raider Klan and their children, traditionalists like Ice Berg, Lil Dred, and Mike Smiff continue producing content steeped in familiar conventions. Like Kodak Black, who combines new-gen meme literacy with older rap styles, Ballgreezy stands between movements but remains outside them, continuing in a post-jook mode while softening its Dionysian edges with grown-man world-weariness. At times he resembles one of the mournful songmen of today; this might be the case, and yet Greezy was crooning before Wayne and Kanye broke down the R&B doors and liberated moping for the kids of today.

Who will unite the Florida factions? Who will be the self-conscious Jay-Z or RZA attempting to bridge the gap of false binaries, long after anyone cares? I see a fat man in the distance. Who is he? He smells of wings. It's Rick Ross, the man without a country. He holds the key - interlocking Wingstop gift cards. They represent money, fame, industry clout, and $50 worth of Wingstop product at any Wingstop location. As of this writing, he is the key who unites the various schools.

DENZEL CURRY, SO HOT RIGHT NOW!

 

hit me with ur rhythm sword

Just when u thought u was safe from Curry jokes now that the NBA skeezon in the bag, Denzel Curry drops a double EP like he a post-hardcore band or sum shit.  When I ain't on South Beach tryna get my skin a nice butter-leather consistency (my body will be turned into a Birkin bag upon death), I'm biggin up the local talent makin waves in this cold world.  305 till I die or a life-changing event requires relocation is wat I always say.  I wanted to fux wit SGP more than I did, wasn't really feelin the gimmicky level fuckery or his Tommy Wright mixed wit Malachi The Nutcracker delivery, but in retrospect I gotta respect the legs he gave to a micro-movement.  Gotta hand it to him for releasing a record on 4AD, but Kanye already did the Factory tribute on 808s so whatever mane.

Denzel Curry been a solid 3.5/5 artist since whenever I decided to pay attention to him, 3 years ago maybe?  IDK.  My main problem with him is the same problem I got with all the other Raider Klansmen, namely a kind of rootlessness to the sound, not exactly ahistorical but ageographical for lack of an actual word.  I get it, I dig the spooky Memphis shit too, but it ain't only where you at it's also where you from.  So I'm pleased with "Delusional Shone" for reproducing the regional on a release marked for worldwide export (cf. "No Shone" by Chad & Lil Dred, "Shone" by Ball Greezy, current Jim Jones WC and future first-ballot member of da Rap Name Hall of Fame).  "Underwater" seethes with the kind of mystical-meets-political, hood-noir poetics once purveyed by Goodie Mob, but it also got ya boy stickin all over the room, feelin like Duckie with Gucci goggles in this motherfucker, u feel?  Free ya ass and ya mind will follow.

The Internet's a great tool for organizing and politickin, but it's a different animal than provincialism's community of constraint - for better or worse.  Ya boy will never stop carryin the flag for regional stylez, and Denzel pleased this tender heart even if no one else give a fuck.  Emotional connections mane, shit ain't rational but they magical.

A SMALL STEP TOWARD BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER

I like to think I'm an open minded guy.  Outside of rap, I like everything from John Mayer to Jason Mraz.  But despite that, I've always been a vicious racist when it concerns rap music's mayonnaise coalition.  In the contemporary "smells like wet dog" scene, A-Wax is the only devil I can get behind (nullus), and even then he had to put out a record as perfect as "Maury Dance" to overcome my intolerance.  Can you blame me? Whiteface stooges like Machine Gun Kelly and Asher Roth have set their people back at least 15 years. By co-signing that, I'm co-signing hate :(.

This kid Pouya appears to be of Caucasian extraction (con sabor latino), but the eyeball test is not conclusive proof of Pouya's T.R.I.B.E.  Maybe he got 1/128th of aborigine like Sista Azalea does.  In his favor, he looks like the kind of creep who cleans up used paper towels in a porno theater.  He is also associated with the remnants of Raider Klan, a crew that typically rubbed me the wrong way.  In most cases they seemed to take the reblog aspect of Tumblrcore a little too seriously, but maybe that's what happens when your leader plays out his complacency of influence on record.  If we talkin nadir, their druggy sub-Based sketches are on some "Let me tell you about my mushroom trip" hippie shit.   Cocaine raps are the only drug raps for me.

His South Side Slugs mixtape is a mixed bag of familiar associations run thru a bedroom filter: quotations of trap bangers, Raider Klan generica, obligatory nihilism.  A skinny white nerd making any form of rap music is something I am predisposed to hating, but I fucks with "Suicidal Thoughts In The Back Of The Cadillac," cause it strays from the usual '90s Memphis/Based God axis that so much Raider Klan material revolves around.  The raps aren't quite there yet, consisting mainly of the Bone Thuggery and Lordly Infamy one would expect, but the songwriting makes this'un stand above the others.  It's the kind of hook-driven country-blues rap that the James Vances and Raymond Belknaps of today might blast as they blow off their heads. Catch me in the hoopdie bumpin this n tattooing disembodied E cups on my arm with a stick 'n' poke.