FLIPPIN GRAMS ON MY FLIPAGRAM

Back when piracy was starting to become the norm, every writer with a pair of glasses and a studio apartment in Williamsburg was speculatin on how the Internet was gonna change music, with dreams of being the next Walter Benjamin or some shit.  They read too much postmodern bullshit in college and was all, "Golly, this influx of information! Young Greil Marcus up in this bitch finna predict the future."

By now most of that wankery has stopped, and the answer has so far revealed itself to be satisfyingly underwhelming: there's been a little bit of change, but not as much as everyone predicted.  Regional styles persist alongside hybridized pastiche.  KANYE did that wack song where he samples CAN, but even the crit-types it was baiting knew it was terrible and swept it under the rug.  Besides, that's called sampling and it's been happening forever.  On a smaller level, rap music functioned like the Internet when nerds were sharing ASCII dick-pics on Usenet, but y'all could make that argument for almost anything.

Someone's gonna read these thinkpieces in the future (prisoners in Gitmo?) and clown on us the way we clown on dudes who thought there would be flying cars by now.  Actually, them dudes was cool.  Keep dreaming, friends.  One day we will bump BOOSIE as we fly the skies together.

But yo, lately Instagram always gets mentioned on my favorite rappers' projects. YO GOTTI and DJ DRAMA mention the 'Gram a couple times on the new Concealed joint, notably on "Ion Feel 'Em" with Kevin Gates (spoiler: not actually about ions), wherein GOTTI ridicules the dissonance between IG/Twitter puffery and reality, thesis fodder for a freshman philosophy major with a torrent of The Matrix and a dimebag of mids.

Oh you a Microsoft plug / You got thrax for sale?

 These bitches ain't really bad like they on IG / In person might think it's a whole 'nother person

It's an evolution of the real vs. fake dichotomy, but where rappers used to question street-cred, they now question the authenticity of social media self-representation.  GOTTI doesn't believe the sepia-toned images of your TECs on the dresser, but he clearly has an account of his own and an unhealthy familiarity with those of his inferiors.

Yeah yeah, Instagram has become a touchstone of online life, but let's not minimize the weirdness of this development.  We have an artist who staked his career on coke-raps talking about picking up chicks, an old and staid trope, except now it's on a social media platform originally designed to make digital images look like they were taken by a vintage LOMO, where pop-feminists lead hashtag campaigns to #freethenipple and you can flame an NYHC luminary into threatening you with bodily harm.  This ain't even a permissible realist prop and status symbol like the pager: it's a free application for sharing photography and connecting with other enthusiasts of the visual form. YO GOTTI breaks character, the coke-rap genre is no longer self-contained, and the world loses meaning.  It's like watching James Bond beat off to PornHub, or living to see Jordan wear distressed jeans big enough to host a family of beavers.

Seeing behind the curtain has its price.  We must honor mystique.

R.I.P. A$AP YAMS

Say what you will about A$AP ROCKY and his fashionable cohort, but that LiveLoveASAP joint changed the game for about three months.  It was like the Doctor Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Sandwich of the Reblog Era.  NYC rappers were still too retrograde, provincial, and stupid to rip off the south; hipster rap was still just a glint in an A&R dweeb's eye.

I guess A$AP YAMS changed all that?  IDK, I only knew him as the dude with the big liver spot on his headpiece until I started getting my necrophiliac death groupie shit on.  But that Jon C NYT profile portrays him as the Malcolm McLaren svengali type behind the A$AP operation, which makes SPACEGHOSTPURRP Glen Matlock (sorry Glen) and Raf Simons Vivienne Westwood.  Dipset are the New York Dolls for obvious reasons.

An' even if u don't fuck heavily with the A$AP schtick, YAMS'S taste was impeccable.  His Complex list is unorthodox and straight from the heart, a map of one man's highly personal hip-hop canon.  No matter what LORD JAMAR tries to tell you (he haunts me Freddy Krueger style in my dreams), the beauty of hip-hop is it ain't a monolithic slab - it's different shit to different peoples from all walks of life.  And yo, the casual enthusiasm behind his choices just shows why so much music writing is wack.  This was a dude just pontificating on his favorite shit, not tryin to write a term paper or parlay his internship at Spin into a position at Pitchfork.  The love is real, even if it was scatterbrained and syrup-addled.  He became a tastemaker cause he had his own taste, and that's hard to come by in this world.

SHY GLIZZY'S PHILOSOPHICAL, BUT EXISTENTIALISM IS FOR THE FUCKBOYS

Yo, ya boy back from the brink and I ain't talkin clink!  Got kidnapped by a jam band while I was skiin da slopes, fell victim to Stockholm syndrome, and swore off all rap music but the cargo short kind.

Anyway, what about this new SHY GLIZZY tape, Law 3?   Best mixtape since IDK, that ASHER ROTH joint I was bangin back in my puka shell days.

But yo, let's get straight to the track "Funeral."  It's a gospel banger courtesy of KE ON THE TRACK, wherin GLIZZY envisions the illustrious mourners and ostentatious hijinks gon bless his funeral.  Spoiler: it sounds a lot like King of Diamonds.  He reflects on the conditions of loved ones, rhapsodizes all DANTE n BEATRICE PORTINARI on his bitch, and articulates his game plan before death's unforeseeable, inevitable scythe cuts him down.

It's an inspired entry in a classic rap theme: joyful celebration of death, mournful acknowledgement of life, the same contradiction that cats like SCARFACE, BIGGIE, and PAC built they reputations upon; it's that very same kinda emotional resonance that makes they listeners more acolytes than fans.

But ain't that what good art is all about?  Fuck life, but middle finger to death too.  Ain't know why we here - can't go on, I'll go on, son!

SILKK THE SHOCKER'S "THAT'S COOL": DEFT SELF-REFLEXIVE COMMENTARY ON THE EXESS-ERA RAP VIDEO OR WHIMPERING DEATH KNELL?

 

 Me and my goon was real lit one night, bottle-breaking drunk, swerving through traffic in a vintage Dodge Dart.  With a crooked smile and a long swig of Mad Dog 20/20, I put on an old CD-R mix of Clear Channel rap I'd paid $5 for in middle school.  SILKK THE SHOCKER and TRINA's "That's Cool" started rattling through the sound system.  "This is fantastic," saith my goon, as he located it on iTunes for the reasonable price of $.99.

When we awoke from the revelry we were locked in an uneasy embrace, our limbs flecked with scrapes and scratches of mysterious origin, the Dodge Dart lodged firmly in a ditch.  "Why did I download this garbage?" he whined.  I excused myself from the situation and left my buddy to his automotive difficulties, but the SILKK track still remained in my memory.

I found still more bounty in the video.  After an establishing shot of snow-covered mountains, SILKK smirks through a wink-wink nudge-nudge explanation of the video:  "No, not in Hawaii, not Cancun, not on the beach.  I'm bout to do this thing in Juneau, Alaska!"

The beat, a typical early-00s rap pastiche of vaguely Asian influence, begins as three desperados on snowmobiles tear-ass over a bend of snow.  They proceed to release Hell upon the slopes throughout the video, performing gnarly blowouts and perilous mogul carves, while SILKK joins them via green screen.  His looks are on-point: fur-lined parka, chic skarf, an impressive assortment of knit hats.

What defines this as a product of its era, however, are the goggles resting on his forehad.  We all remember the curious run of goggles as fashion accessory in mid/late-'90s hip-hop, but in this situation SILKK actually needs them.  What do we make of this?  Is it a knowing send-up of the uselessness of Rap Goggles, obligatory realist prop, or merely an off-the-cuff gag?

Intention doesn't necessarily matter, for the goggles signify multitudes, as does the video.  It's a fish-out-of-South-Beach recontextualization of the Bad Boy style rap video, just as much as it is goofy fun, just as much as it is an admission of the same style of video-making's exhausted possibilities.  The automobile and video hoe tropes have been done so many times that the only way to burnish them with some degree of newness is to place them in an outlandish locale.  The cycle continues.

Also, TRINA is a good rapper.

PEACE TO THE DJ: IN DEFENSE OF HE WHO YELLS LOUDEST

So yo, lately I been noticing an alarming trend in certain schools of Rap Music Thought: distaste for the DJ who be yellin all over the tracks.  You know what I'm talkin bout - the "GANG-STA GRIZZ-ILLZ" and "DAAAAAMN SON, WHERE'D YOU FIND THIS?" loudmouths of the world.  Really tho?  U really wanna go out of your way to find a version wherein those not-so-subtle joys are eliminated?  Yo, that's like eating a bunless burger, kid.

I'm sure smarter minds than me could argue that the DJ is a commentary on the multimedia cacophony of tha postmodern/digital age, but I ain't about that Ivory Tower fuckboy shit.  I'm sure more research-oriented minds than me could research the shit outta the bloviating DJ, trace the thread all the way to the precursors of hip-hop - catch me at the soundclash - and show how it's an essential part of the culture.  But yo, I ain't that dude.  I just think listenin to a DJ-free version of a rap cassette is anemic, and moreover, just a bad look.  It's like watching a 3D movie without ya specs.  Like rockin an tailored suit without the pocket square.  Like eatin French Onion Soup without the gratinee. Think about it.

LOL, WE BACK ALREADY? RICK ROSS ON THAT "BOUND 2" FREESTYLE

Lol, but this shit is funny, ain't it?  I was just chirpin bout MMG runnin the rap game in the mold of '90s BAD BOY, and ol fat-ass releases a HYPE WILLIAMS directed video.  Although it ain't necessarily up to par with classic era HYPE, it still stimulates the viewer in the same way that originally got his videos noticed, posing such brain-breaking questions as, "How can a ferris wheel possibly support the rolling fats of a RICK ROSS?"  I think it's either a studio set or some green screen wizardry.  I bin on ferris wheels, and them shits is rickety.

Because ROSS' verses ain't disrupting digestive system function or nothin, they are technically forgetable, but after "Devil in a Red Dress" it just sound right for him to rock over a YEEZY beat.  All hail the fat one.

OFF-BRAND MIGOS SURPASSES THE ORIGINAL? MEANWHILE, MMG COASTS AS THE FAIREST LABEL IN ALL THE LAND

Dearest Reader,

Recently I vamoosed outta Jax Hole for a weekend 'cause shit was gettin hot on the slopes.  I was boinkin some married ski bunnies, and let's just say their husbands weren't feelin my particular brand of sexual libertinism.  So I shunted down to the teeming metropolis of Cheyenne (Chey-Town, stand up!), where I indulged in certain urban amenities unavailable in even the grimiest corners of my beloved hometown.

I wents down to the Cheyenne ghetto and let myself bathe in the chaos and grit.  Methlabs exploding on every corner.  Skechers shoes.  Hooters girl's socks.  Terrifying stuff.  But like a year spent backpacking across Europe on yo parents' dime, it gave me some much-needed perspective.  I'll spare u the intimate details of my self-realization, but as I stood on tha block watchin flames engulf a trailer-home methlab, I heard TRACY T's "16" blarin from the tinny speakers of an Android phone.

I was like, "Yo, Cletus, this shit is bonkers.  MIGOS gwan run 2014 even more obnoxiously than they ran 2013."  To which Cletus, nodding mournfully, responded, "My friend, this is not MIGOS you hear.  'Tis a young scribe by the name of TRACY T.  Recently signed to the venerable MAYBACH MUSIC GROUP."

Sheeeeeiiittt.  You could've fooled me wit dat mouthbreather syncopation, the wack-a-mole repetition -- the conspicuous use of the word "migo."  Gotta say, though, this shit had be bouncin in my Rossignols.  Could it be that the facsimile was just as good - if not better - than the original?  Reminded me of 1989, the year punk broke, when TAD made the unlikely jump into the rooms of teenage girls and middle-America malls.  Soon there were imitators like CANDLEBOX, NIRVANA, BUSH, and CREED, many of whom were arguably better than the originators.  Will this be the case with the MIGOS sound?

Time will only tell.  In the meantime, it must be noted: despite the vocal disapproval, the borderline derision of the Rap Music blogtelligentsia, MMG has quickly amassed the biggest dynasty RAP MUSIC has seen since early '00s ROC-A-FELLA or mid-'00s DIPSET.  G.O.O.D. MUSIC?  Don't make me laugh, child, they some middle-management second fiddles.  Hate it or love it, MMG is on top!