Wednesday, May 31, 2017

WATCH FOR DA HOOK


HBK of Doughboyz (a/k/a Kiddo) back wit a solid sophomore outing. It's hard to recover from getting snuffed on film, but HBK's resilience should serve as inspiration for anyone who's been jumped by the metaphorical 15 goons that we call life. "Should I" is just a quality top-down Jay & Jermaine gettin gay in the "Money Ain't A Thing" video type banger, a song you could play as you drive up the West Side Highway in your '95 Miata doin it N.O.R.E.'s way and throwin ones in the air on that Raloesque humanitarian tip, some flossin type shit from a man old enough to remember when Cristal was the preferred fizzy wine, before they got racist and mothafuckas started drinking Ace of Spades or whatever.

You know I like that hardbody Detroit shit as much as the next blogbro, but sometimes I need to take a break from snatching chains and let my luscious bowl cut blow in the wind like Thelma and/or Louise. Chuuuch, my friends, CHUUUUUUUUUUCH.

Friday, May 26, 2017

OLD A BAY BAY


Rode the snake from the Creek Boyz lake on this one. Let's get one thing straight: "With My Team" is a certified byanger, got pathos out the anus, but a lotta bloggas out here acting like it's a solemn-faced ode to friendship and nothing else. That's a selective reading. Right after thanking God he's not on a tshirt, Turk P. Diddy is back on his bullshit, reminiscing on a bitch who'll let the whole crew run train on her. Group sex expresses some form of male companionship, but it ain't something Teddy Roosevelt would encourage.

Young Fedi Mula (good postmodern rap names, these guys) spends the majority of his verse ranting about freak hoes. This does not bother me. I rock myself to sleep with problematic content. But to deliberately misrepresent the material is not just dishonest and manipulative, it ignores the fact that good rap in the post-gangster era is about contradiction and tension. Moments of extreme profundity are countered by lines of equal crassness; elegies become orgies. This is good.

Long touted as the nĂ¼ Brooklyn, Baltimore's rap surge could be a curse as much as a blessing. Picture twenty years in the future: the Baltimore Sun runs an incendiary article on the privileged yuppies living in Young Moose's childhood home. Yeah, it's crazy. But remember: they got gourmet cheese in Bed Stuy.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

BallGreezyOfficialVevo


Ballgreezy might never hit nationally, but he's one of the few jook alumni who's been able to keep da dream goin once the beans ran out. "Nice and Slow" is like "Shone" with an associates degree, a Dillard's perma-press suit, and a $20 gift certificate to SuperCuts. Joining him is Lil Dred, who some may remember from a quality "Ecstasy"/"On & On"* flip from a few years back. Another entry in the catalog of a low-key South Florida stylistic moment, perfect for the pillaging of a Numero Group or German bootlegger 25 years from now.

If "Look At Me!" = crashing a go-kart high on flakka + kicking pregnant women x cos(Dahvie Vanity - Jessi Slaughter), then "Nice and Slow" = sipping on Henny + pulling on the blunt w/ the hard-earned wisdom of maturity + a candy-paint box Chevy - domestic violence x (cutting out coupons for back-to-school sales / working 60+ hours a week with no health insurance)^69. CHUUUUCH.

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*How did a guido one-hit-wonder drop the "Triggaman" of more than a decade of Dade + Broward music?

Friday, May 12, 2017

THE FUTURE OF IGNORANCE


What happened to ignorance? In the early oughts J-Zone assembled the urtext of ignorant rap, a testament to the imaginative power of grotesque sex and reprehensible values. Like a rap game 120 Days of Sodom, the songs are a sometimes hilarious, sometimes disquieting catalog of human urges at their most debased.

Lil Pump may not be able to suck his own dick, but he is fashioning a rap that is literally ignorant. There is nothing unsophisticated or unaware about the Ign'ant fraternity's exhaustive odes to bad morals, rendered in an aficionado's vivid detail, whereas Lil Pump's claim to ignorance rests on recycled Lil B tropes and self-proclamation. Even so, his preoccupation with ignorance is weirdly historical, just as his pared down, repetitive, turnt-up approach evokes a regional lineage not apparent at first glance.

Do I fully understand Lil Pump's appeal? Ya mans ain't Jared Fogle; I hear a Miami teenager, one missed Xan away from a seizure, channeling Famous Dex and Lil Yachty. But his commitment to extreme repetition and brevity sets him apart from his contemporaries, suggesting that one day, if he doesn't evaporate in fiber optics as quickly as he materialized, he might define new limits of deliberate stupidity.

Selected comments from Lil Pump's "Flex Like Ouu" short film: