THAT OLD NEW

STREET LORD'Z PLATINUM - COME ROLL WITH A NI--A (1999)

Not trying to be a rap republican, but this is the best rap song I've heard since the last time I've blogged. Your boy is sinking deeper into the delirium of old age and he likes it. Some honorable tracks have come across the dash, but do any of them confirm the longstanding connection between Bay (proto-)hyphiness and Detroit grit? They do not.

I am too young to figure out how to embed a video on Blogspot, too old to do anything else, so I will spend the remainder of this post trying to jerry-rig some primitive HTML. As I used to say in more carefree days: "CHUUUUUUUCH."

BACK LIKE COOKED CRACK

SMITTY FT. KANYE WEST, SCARFACE, AND JOHN LEGEND - GHETTO (2005)

It's sick, in every sense of the word, to think that I'm still moving through culture. I've lost a step. My hair is turning white, the kids laugh at the Pyrex Vision logo plastered across my ass, but I don't know what else to do with myself, and so I move onward.

The reappearance of the '03 XXL Freshmen list got me reminiscing on the raps of my youth that fell through the cracks. Little Haiti's Smitty earned local airplay and a Hype Williams video with "Diamonds on My Neck," an underrated slab of Swizzy 2.0, before his debut album was shelved and he was banished back to his old ghostwriter haunts. According to a Wikipeia citation terminating in a 404 error, Smitty is currently signed to Blackground/Interscope and will be releasing an album "in the near future." Time is relative. We may very well be banging new Smitty on our Nanos before this blog is updated again.

"Ghetto" is about as mid-00s as you could ask for: Kanye soul sample, John Legend providing the melodic counterpoint to Ye's talk-hook, a Scarface verse for some reason. I'm not complaining. Everything is so self-contained that Smitty ends up being an also-ran on his own track. Was Twista busy that day? Did someone owe Smitty a favor? His presence makes no sense, as if an armchair rapper deepfaked himself into the object of his fantasies.

SHE MY JERSEY CLUB QUEEN, MET HER AT THE BRICK BANDITS SHOW

When will Jersey club get its Wire gentrification? We've seen it happen for various forms of regional dance music (ghettotech, footwork, Balitmore club), but Jersey remains relatively untouched by the dance voyeurs and Yung Alan Lomaxes of the world*. Theories:

1. Too similar, aesthetically, to Baltimore club.
2. The New Jersey brand has been irreparably damaged by the likes of Tommy Cheeseballs, Joe Buddens, and Rick Ta Life.
3. Detroit has contributed richly to American music and people will always care about the city's music. Chicago has the legacy of house music, varying levels of media infrastructure, and people with the means and inclination to document. Baltimore has some of these things. Newark, for the most part, does not.

Whether it was ignorance or "Trap Queen" fatigue, I missed this when it first came out in 2017. Paterson's biggest rap export collaborates with one of Newark's leading young EDM exponents and we slept?

It doesn't help that the production dulls the more dizzying aspects of the Jersey club sound, registering as a conventional 2017 rap song to the unbriefed ear. Was Jayhood playing it safe in hopes of a crossover career? Was Big Thinkpiece putting pressure on Fetty to produce another "Trap Queen?" Why would Jayhood put his verse before a multi-platinum artist's? As always, the probable answer comes in the form of a YouTube comment:



* Vice appears to have pushed it before and after their documentary on the genre debuted, but the coverage tapers to nonexistence by the time the Thump money dried up.

TIKTOK ON THE CLOCK, BUT THE THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY DON'T STOP

Yo, Dro! I know you’re not that young anymore, and I get it. In an effort to gain younger readers, I’ve been disguising myself as a zoomer—anime graphic tee, orange raver pants, the puffiest of white Balenciagas—and walking around community colleges with a baggie full of Adderall, careful not to tip them to the age-revealing viral hit from whence I took the idea.

“Sup bro,” I say. I dab once to ingratiate myself. “Yoooo deadass bro, how lit are Death Grips? Yeah, I don't remember 9/11 either.” I hit the Juul. “No cap, my droog, that and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy opened my mind to rap. I’m a deadass simp for those doomer vibes. Fr fr, how lame is the boomer remover? ‘Ok, boomer,’ right? Hey, have you read Rap Music Hysteria? It’s a really lit rap blog on Blogspot. Blog-spot. B-L-O-G-S-P-O-T. Forget it, I’ll Snapchat you the link. Alright, see you on Fortnite!”

It’s not my proudest moment, but at least I haven’t sunken to Dro’s level and started deadass, high-key, no-cap simping for TikTok! Are you insane, Dro? TikTok has been declared a threat to national security by zoomer political figurehead David Hogg. As much as I enjoy the cutting-edge comedic stylings of TikTok’s nascent Marty Allens and Sid Caesars, my solemn duty as a patriot comes before my laughter. Y'all memes and jokes are fun, quoth Hogg, but when you ride with TikTok, you’re riding with Xi Jinping!

Dro, you’re a legend and an innovator. If you need help reaching this younger generation, I’ll deadass lowkey swing by on an electric scooter (fr fr) and supply you with several baggies of prescription drugs popular with the zoomer demo—cause, no cap, I’m a Young Dro simp 4 life.

ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN WE AIN'T HAD HUMAN CONTACT IN WEEKS

When Spotify dropped this on my Release Radar playlist, I initially thought this man had stolen away with the 2007 zeitgeist and plopped it down in 2020 like B-Frase in Encino Man. Alas, it's an old track masquerading as a new release, but its striking similarity to "Shone" inspires fanboy visions of an alternate timeline in which post-Thizz Bay Areans meet BallGreezy and Grind Mode for a cross-continental movement of diaphanous MDMA club rap.

The actual rap? Not great. KidSpitz is a placeholding jobber, neither here nor there; then, like a rude and intense pop-up ad, E-40 appears with a copy-paste verse completely inconsonant with the elegantly lumbering mood. If I heard this in the club, I would have cold sweats and heart palpitations. I would lose my appetite for hedonism and take a smoke break outside. No one wants fast raps when they're rolling, 40!

It's all about the beat—the tone it sets, the era and psychoactive states it recalls. Though now paraplegic, BrownieRogue continues mixing, mastering, and breaking news for the legally embattled A-Wax.

If I escape COVID-19 with my life, I'm buying a '98 Mitsubishi Eclipse. I'm putting neon underglow and an obnoxious muffler on the motherfucker and rolling down Collins with the "Turnt Up" instrumental blasting until the cops drag me to TGK, peak Ja Rule levels of MDMA in my system.

AN ACCEPTABLE AMOUNT OF HARD FOR THE FUCKIN' RADIO

ARTIST UNKNOWN, "CAR CRASH SLIP OR FALL," DATE UNKNOWN

For years, TERRESTRIALiens have known that 411 Pain has the hardest commercial jingles in the game. From heart-on-sleeve pathos to parodic gallows humor, their musical sensibility empathizes the full range of emotion felt by someone who just got sideswiped by a jalopy. But where 411 Pain mirrors the larger trend of hybridized (or vanishing) regional styles by mining a panoply of styles, Freeman Law remains the foremost purveyor of bass music since Trick Daddy strategically euthanized the genre on "Scarred."  You won't hear Anquette unless you tune into the oldies station, so the closest you'll get to bass bliss are those 7 seconds (no Walk Together, Rock Together) of touchingly regional sponsored content. In the dialectic of global and local culture, score one for the isolationists!



GUAPDAD 4000, "PLATINUM FALCON," 2020

So what to make of its similarity to the chorus on Guapdad 4000's "Platinum Falcon?" Is it just an effect of the sing-songy approach and the phonetic similarity between "car crash" and "card crackin?" Am I being overbearing to suggest that Miami Bass has any claim on nursery rhyme constructions? Parallel thinking or cryptomnesia?

I'm hoping it's good old-fashioned plagiarism, because an artist who rips off Freeman Law jingles is an artist I can get excited about. If we live in a world where an artist can't sample radio jingles, then the Dust Brothers died for nothing.

50 BEST RAPS OF 2019

2019: a diaper odyssey
Another year in the books, another decade in the grave. If, when I began this blog 2012, you told me I'd still be infrequently active at the end of the decade, I would've looked you in your demoniac time-traveling eyes and said, "Disappointing, but well within the realm of possibilities." Then I'd brandish my wacking baton and hold you hostage, demanding that you repent for violating the laws of space and time in between performing elaborate rap-hand choreography to an unintelligible, self-censored version of "All Gold Everything."

Why persist in the tepid breeze of the digital yawn? I haven't earned so much as an oxidized penny toiling away in this sinking morass of a city. A labor of love it is not. I am Ahab in pursuit of a white whale who becomes more inscrutable with the passing of each year. It's beyond good and evil, doesn't age, occupies infinite spaces at once. I closed my eyes and it had an undercut; when I opened them I saw a rainbow mane sinking into the deep. I'm getting old. My eyes are failing. Let me die.

I cannot die. Death piles up around me—I saw the most Dionysian rappers of their generation destroyed by Actavis and Pfizer—but I cannot die, it finds me dry and lacking, and so I make a list, a catalogue of semi-meaningful consumption.

Have you seen my list?

2019 raps
03 Greedo - 10 Purple Summers
Z Money - Where Ya Sent Em
Jooba Loc - Won't Shoot
Duwap Kaine - Plays
TisaKorean - Double Dare (Soapy Anthem)
AzChike & AzSwaye - Oouh
D Savage - Pill
Kemba - Deadass
Adé Hakim - Love Is Worth My Time
Asian Da Brat - Eskimo Flow
Chippass, E-40, ALLBLACK - Me
Baby 9eno & Cheecho - Germ
Slauson Malone & Pink Siifu - Off Me! and or The Wake Pt. 1 & 2
The Mekanix & Husalah - Buat My Money
Memo 600 & King Von - Exposing Me (Remix)
Quando Rondo & NoCap - New Ones
Young Nudy - Long Ride
Philthy Rich - Don't Forget
FMB DZ - 2K19
Gunna - Yao Ming
ZelooperZ & Earl Sweatshirt - Easter Sunday 97
Valee - You & Me Both
Stunna 4 Vegas - Fuckery
Megan Thee Stallion & Juicy J - Simon Says
Scarfo Da Plug & Brodinski - Off The Leash
Styles P - Give N Take
Soldier Kidd - No Rap Cap
Polo G - Deep Wounds
Malibu Ken - Suicide Big Gulp
Reese LAFLARE - What's Real
Slowthai & Mura Masa - Doorman
Kayvo & Keezah - Chicken Talk
Memo 600 - Steppers
$ilkmoney - Africa
Lil Tecca - Ransom
Mavi - Bloodbath
Pivot Gang & Kari Faux - Mortal Kombat
BlocBoy JB - Mercedes
Mach-Hommy & Quelle Chris - Chiney Brush
King Carter & Pink Siifu - Problems
NAV & Meek Mill - Tap
Swervyy, MallyBo, B-Rock - Do Yo Shit
Blvck Spvde & Ohbliv - Parallel
Rico Nasty - Time Flies
Blu & Oh No - Boogie To Flex
YS Ft. 1TakeJay, Ohgeesy - Bompton (Remix)
Danny Brown & Run The Jewels - 3 Tearz
Peso Chamberlain - Willie Mays
Rod Wave & Lil Durk - Heart On Ice (Remix)
Pop Smoke - Welcome To The Party

old raps
051 Montana & 051 Drilla - Facts
Erule - Listen Up
3re Tha Hardaway - Born in tha Ghetto
Prince Rahiem - Loose My Money
Ted Kamal - How Is You Feelin Vro?
Fonzworth Bentley, Kanye West, Andre 3000 - Everybody
Fonzworth Bentley, Pimp C, Lil Wayne - C.O.L.O.U.R.S.
Harlem World - We Both Frontin
Ma$e - Someone Like You
Sporty Thievz - Cheapskate



the decade in short
2010: roflmao check out this meme rap xD
2011: no but seriously, this meme rap is actually good, this guy has heard of cormega
2012: hey did you know the rappers in atlanta are taking MDMA? and that chicago has rap?
2013: maybe we can build a brand intellectualizing the bones of swag-rap
2014: did you know they break records in strip clubs? i hope to go to one one day.
2015: hey did you know the rappers in atlanta are taking MDMA sadly and androgynously? they're doing it in strip clubs, which is where they break the records.
2016: "at least we're gonna get some badass political rap! remember rock against reagan?" you say to yourself as zoomers follow you down the unlit street, ready to pry the zeitgeist from your aging fingers
2017: where did all these crazy kids come from and why do they all like kurt cobain?
2018: death
2019: ok so get this, it's a branded advertainment show pairing très badass dababy w/ huggies's little snugglers line + death
2020: doing the mayor pete dance as the world burns?