DANCEHALL MUSIC HYSTERIA #7: "REAL" DANCEHALL!

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just a lil somethin I thought up when I was gettin my hair blown out by a picturesque guido. It's a truism that applies to dancehall as well as hip-hop. Every time a revolutionary like Shaggy pushes the culture forward, a neo-reactionary contingent rises up to resist the changing of the cultural tide.

We're all familiar with the righteous traditionalism of "real hip-hop." Gappy Ranks is what you would call "real dancehall." It tries to set its scene in the same aural region as a PNP Rally, but it's studied where the original was spontaneous. Find a thicc gyal to bruk on mi cock and I'll be sounding my airhorns all over this Diploid simulacrum. In the back of my mind, I'll know I'm just dancing by myself in the back of a Johnny Rockets, and all the real soda jerks were long ago buried in their beds of malt.

KODAK GRAY

Honestly couldn't be mo bored w/ Kodak Black these days, and it has nothing to do with the particle-displacing memeification he underwent. As a meme artist, he is up there with Plies, who is up there with Gucci, who is up there with Cam'Ron. That's a talent of some sort.

I don't care that he got fat either, although I think that sets a poor example for the youth who are our future. The problem is that he can barely carry a song on his own, much less an album. Hate to use such a loaded term, but the guy is low energy. He sounds like this Pokemon when he's rapping. On any of his mixtapes, you get maybe two or three good songs. The rest is anemic 'Nolia LARPing and the sub-Pacian moping of a Kevin Gates or Eminem.

Jackboy is some fat kid who is friends with Kodak. He has slightly more energy than Kodak Black, but what I'm really feelin is the ill marimbas. Steel drums and marimbas, let's take 2017 back to the Whole Foods checkout line. Jackboy also earns points for a sloppy Wayne Wonder remake, which is actually way better than it should be. CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH

DANCEHALL MUSIC HYSTERIA, #6: POST-SCAMCORE

A hearty wa gwan to my readership. DANCEHALL MSUIC HYSTEIRA back in dis mudflap.

Who can forget when Buju Banton and Nardo Ranks had a free and open exchange on the subject of skin bleaching? We all know what happened. Nardo Ranks became a cultural icon and nobody uses cake soap anymore.

History repeats itself. In recent years, the lottery scam has been celebrated in songs by Vybz Kartel and Lady Saw. Legit stars like Vershon and Tommy Lee Sparta, the Criss Angel of dancehall, even caught cases for their alleged involvement in these scams. The set-up is simple. Call up some poor old bastard and tell them they won the lottery. Ask 'em to send a lil money to pay for fees or taxes or some shit and watch the wire transfers pile up. For my gramps, it was some sprinkleheads from the Netherlands. They were even selling him magic crystals n shit, it was weird, I thought he was an old guy and not some new-age earthperson (RIP Gramps). Guess that's what we all gotta look forward to when we become wrinklebags.

Last year's scamcore included Vybz's "Western Union" and Xklusive's cumbersome "Scamma Dem Deh Yah (Big Money Popping)." Now we got this barnstormer. Some speculate "Dem Think A Chattingz" is a response to the Xklusive song. Basically they sayin, "Be about ya walk, not ya talk. Scamming? Where ya money at? 'Tain't nothin to brag about." It ain't exactly anti-scamming, but it ain't glorifying it neither. Anyway, moderately big chune! BO BO!

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I like scamming songs because they are rebellious, and it fits with the rebellious image I have of myself to enjoy punk counterculture songs about illegal activities, even though I would hate it if it happened to me or someone I care about, but I won't have to put my money where my mouth is until I'm staring down the barrel of a gun, which is unlikely to happen, or Alzheimer's, which I am genetically predisposed to, turns my brain to baby formula, and I'm sending my paltry Social Security checks to some guy in Montego Bay and a Thai cutie who likes me for my personality. So until that comfortably distant day, I'll keep promoting songs about selling drugs and swindling old people! I might even write a thinkpiece educating you on why bad things are actually good, and you'll just have to expand your mind you lumpen-dummy :)

PAGING RAY MUNNS AND DJ LETHAL: I HEAR THE EARLY '00S CALLING

RAMP MPUSIC HSYTERIA! is just a product of this toilet culture. It's an unavoidable fact: ya boy came up in the age of the rap-metal DJ. Crazy Town and P Roach is in my bloodline. I was permanently damaged seeing Method Man muggin it up w/ Fred Durst, hit my first lick listening to a radio-dub of "This Means War." Even a hardline trueschooler like P. Diddy contributed to the normalization of this strange, unnatural coupling. U gotta wonder if it was all part of some deranged Clintonite psyop. Put fluoride in the water and hormones in the milk and MC Shan on a Sum 41 record - enfeeble an entire generation when they young and impressionable. Try as I might to distance myself from the rap-rock naval, it's exactly as da god Chester Bennington said: I tried so hard, and got so far / But in the end, it doesn't really matter!

So this blapper from DaBoii fits me like a red Yankees cap and camouflage cargo shorts (optional wallet chain add-on). Metal guitars over a "Boyz N The Hood" beatjack? Chuuuuuch indeed, but what's good with that throwback jersey? Oooh shit, it's a throwback jersey for Calvin Cambridge of Like Mike (2002)? Now that's what I call peak early '00s, boy! All that's missin is the duckbill hair-swoop, Sammie on the hook, and some 9/11 references. Now that the wheels are falling off of Cash Money homages, turn of da millenium rap-rock is ripe for nostalgia mining.

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER BOYZ

Real trap emotion comin from da Bay. Astute YouTubers will recognize Lil Sheik from palling around with blawg-hot SOBxRBE; Big Money TuTu made some noise wit a Bay Goes Detroit blapper (banger + slap) now obligatory for youngins wishing to prove their mainey-ness. TuTu is only 15 according to a commenter claiming to be his cousin (fakenewz), so that MCM knapsack prolly holdin some algebra and biology textbooks in addition to the work.

This that get ready for winter music. Takes me back to the days when Kanye MK1 and Just Bleezy dropped some reflective soulful shit right in time for the black dogs of winter to bite u in the cockles, when LL and J. Lo wrung their hands on record and you was sittin cooped up lookin at the gray day outside like, "This can't be life"; when ya feets was in some thick-ass wool socks and the only thing keepin u warm was a broke space heater cause ya landlord too cheap to run the heat at adequate temperatures, fuckin slumlord beeyich, he's gonna get his when you move out and he realizes you scrapped his copper wire like a slick metalurgical villain and bought yaself a Gucci jumpsuit with tha proceeds.

4 real tho, sometimes this fast e-lifestyle wears on my soul, and I been goin thru some thangs too. Can't nobody feel RAP MUSIC HYSESIRIA'S pain. Cause my pain? My pain is mothafuckin' exquisite!

GOTTA LEARN TO LIVE WITH REGERTZ

Ride around with fed cases
Merk a nigga for a couple dead faces
Fuck your babymama, ain't no sympathy
I hope she have a dead baby

Worst part of makin a Best Of list is you know you're gonna uncover a lot more gem-quality rap materials when the dust settles and ya lungs is tired from inflating your own ego. OMB Peezy's "Lay Down," released in visual form on 12/6, is one such example. Maybe ya boy boy is just high on the wings of a new toy, but it's been a minute since I've been on my Rain Man shit and played a song repeatedly on repeated repeat. Peezy moves nimbly between wordy post-drill ice veins flow and the kind of pseudo-melodic raps New Orleans chats lapsed into before motherfuckers decided to play Ginuwine in the damn booth. When's the last time you was singing along to a murder-rap? From all the funk he bringin you might think he's from the Bay, but the young man is representing Mobile, AL according to the information my Google snitches procured.

Keith Welch, Jr. seems to be the go-to director for a lot of quality independent artists these days. Close Redtube for a sec and give that man a follow!