Wussup to all my peepers, midnight creepers, and all my degenerates who masturbate into sneakers! It's time for RPA MSUIC HISTERIA to wrap up the year once again. Now I know my updates is sporadic and all, but I prefer to think of them as spo-radical! Namean? Like this post if u agree.
All in all, 2013 was a wack year for rap music. But I am nothing if not an eternal optimist, and so I look to the raps that tickled my fantasy, the ones that made me laugh and cry, rather than dwelling on the raps that diminished my already threadbare hopes for the human race. Shall we proceed? I do say we shall!
MIGOS
Group of the year! This is the shit the streetz was bumpin in 2013 (J-Hole, stand up!). Bonus points for bein the whipping boy for every rap purist decrying the state of rappity rappin. In short, their cadences were the illest; we will one day speak of them in the same reverential, slightly embarrassed tones with which we invoke the name of DAS EFX.
RUN THE JEWELS
Mane. Would you look at EL-P? That off-kilter red skully, the black t-shirt terminating in white person tattoos, the Napoleon dynamite glasses frames - affectations that make him look identical to the articles of human filth who make their daily exodus at the Lorimer St. L stop. For much of my youth I nursed an analogous distrust of the man, much of which was informed by SCOTT SEWARD's tone-deaf, yet devastating, review of FANTASTIC DAMAGE. Like, that review was wack and all, but kinda cut to the marrow of what made EL-P irritating. "Step Father Factory?" That was some emo crybaby shit.
Then one day I realized: my distaste for EL-P was rooted in my own self-hatred! Word! EL-P was actually fairly dope if you could excuse all the pretension and self-indulgence. And you know what he did this year? He cut down all that artsy fartsy shit by doing an album with a REAL RAPPER (C) instead of one of those compulsive masturbator DEF JUX fags.
RUN THE JEWELS probably used the word "fuckboy" more than any other rappers this year; and for that alone, they make this prestigious list!
LIL SNUPE DIED :(
I ain't hear LIL SNUPE till I checked one of those wack HIP HOP TXL compilations that's always gettin mad downloads on Datpiff. At first I was like, "Fo rill - his name is LIL SNUPE? Why don't he just call himself LIL NOTJORIOUS B.I.G. or LIL LL KOOL JAY?" I heard him again on the DJ MUSTARD Ketchup tape that came out this summer. At this point I still wasn't sold, but I'd begun to accept that he was someone I'd be hearing from for a while.
Then he got shot over video games or some dumb shit. SMH. Anyway, like the death groupie I is, I revisited some of his old freestyles on the YouTubes and was pleased with what I heard. In a lot of clips you can see MEEK MILL encouraging him to spit some real shit - dat roaches, rats, and poverty flow - and the dude came through with the squalidest imagery. His freestyle prowess was a welcome atavism in these readin off yo Blackberry ass times. Before he got capped over Super Smash Brothers, SNUPE was starting to remind me of another Louisiana spitter who never reached his prime.
EARL SWEATSHIRT
"Had a spark when thou started / But nowest thou ist just garbage" - Jayson-Z, "Ye Olde Takeover"
ODD FUTURE was a breath of fresh air when they came out, but look at em now! TYLER THE CREATOR is as used-up as a 30 year-old running back. Dude has been wack and irritating since he got out of the Tumblr ghetto. Fuck you, TYLER THE CREATOR. I will fight you.
HODGY BEATS and all them other cats were always just some banal dickriders, so where does that leave us? EARL SWEATSHIRT, kid! The main event. His Doris LP surpassed expectations to the same extent that TYLER's post-Bastard output has sucked balls. Man, them bars is mad dense. We need to exercise our close reading tools on some of them verses!
And da best part? The album is short as fuck, totes catering to my generation's Internet-addled attention spans. EARL is a true poet, the Tennyson of our times, a prophet of peace, and a beacon of
FUTURE & RICK ROSS
"Bugatti" and "U.O.E.N.O." was the songs of the year, and you know this wasn't 'cause of ROCKO or ACE HOOD. Whether you like it or not, ROZAY's rape-y ass lyrics was definitely da bars of the year. And as much as young men aspire to be fat, disgusting frauds like RICK ROSS, I don't think his lyrics had any appreciable effect on sex crimes this year.
Now would be the time to reminisce on the many occasions I woke up in new Bugattis this year, but I am legally required to remain silent on this subject (I may or may not have left some hot DNA on the seatz).
CHANCE THE RAPPER
White America's new favorite negro performer!
SUMMARY
2013 was highly, highly wack. I could sift through some of the chaff - the also-rans and kind-of-were's - but I'm tired and quite obviously lazy. See you in 2014, bitches!