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.