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?

JOE BUDDENS BEEN ON A LOSING STREAK SINCE 2009

You might object to the title of this post. "Buddens been losing since he came out his mama's womb," you say. Fair enough. In counterpoint, "Pump It Up" still hits when it comes on the old fart radio.  Summer of '03, brah—Buddens and Young Gunz had radio hits on the heels of the summer of Diddy and Loon. Diplomatic Immunity, kid. Chain Gang Vol. 2, pal. We mistook the dying breaths of East Coast rap's mainstream viability for an evolution, a return. Mea culpa, motherfucker.

If you reading this blog, you know all of Buddens's subsequent actions have been laughable. Who put the battery in the back of this one-hit wonder? Buddens saw Lil B bubbling in 2010 and his moustache-twirling ass got jealous.

Fast forward after some back and forth. Joe Buddens's balding, near-death body is dropped in the Palisades once Lil B merked him on the greatest diss song of the decade.

Can you murder someone who's already dead? A year prior in '09, ol' bloviating, delusional Buddens took exception to being behind Melle Mel on a Vibe list of greatest rappers. What followed was a line-by-line, clinical assassination from the swolest originator.

That alone would've been enough, but Melvin went even further by showing his proficiency with one of the more newly minted elements of hip-hop—the streaming video shitting-upon thereof. Peep game.

After taking a heinous, fact-based shit on Joe Buddens, Melle Mel seeks recourse in a chart—a 1-30 metric following a mugshot-style pipe-smoking human figure from head to haunches.

FIG. 1

"Melle Mel is number 5. I'm around the throat-part, or the mouth-part of hip-hop."

FIG. 2

"Joe Budden is down here, number 32. That's somehwere around the ass crack or the ballsack of hip-hop!"

Joe Buddens doesn't even fall within Melle Mel's metric. Buddens, you been trash. Come around me with your human ass-crack shenanigans and I guarantee you'll be needing the Preparation H.

SCOOB LOVER IS STILL THE FATHER OF YOUR STYLE

I know I been on this tip, but why is Pressa allowed to live when Guerilla Black was mocked all the way to the rap graveyard? 'Cause he chose a more obscure artist from whomst to crib style? Admittedly, the Notorious B.I.G. is probably not the best artist to steal from if you're trying to get away with it it. It's like ripping off notorious sex pest Pablo Picasso, who gave these Young Turks (no genocide) the conceptual green light to bite style in the name of art. One time this bald idiot Pablo Picasso said some shit 'bout how good artists borrow and great artists steal, but no matter how you peel the tangelo, Pressa ain't a great artist.

Listen bruh, I get that millennial infantalization is a thing. I suffer from it sometimes like any of y'all in betwixt X and Z(oomers). Don't head into my domicile unless you want to step on hella rattles and soiled diapers. All that expressed, I don't want my rap metaphorically filling up a big spoon with baby formula and making that airplane sound as it jams that shits in my inner ear.

Pressa, you stole your whole style from Scoob. Throw the man some cash or put a footnote in your shit.

FUCK THE DMCA! RARE AND BASED 2008 KILLER MIKE!

My rap dirty like the piss pissed out by white men,
In Celebrity RE-HAB -- but this ain't RE-HAB!
So when Danny Bonaduce check out of RE-HAB!
I'ma be right there, fat sack of crack,
Sayin, "First hit's on me, here go a free gram!"

Vinyl sucks, dude. No reason for you to be spinning LPs unless you're old enough to remember them. Ya mans is fully digitized. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU OWN, as them Fugazi boys said. Ha ha!

Like a good resigned subject, I listen to most of my music on Spotify. Better than protecting my sleeves in clear plastic condoms, fretting about whether my manly natural oils will reduce daddy's copy of 30 Seconds Over D.C. from VG+ to VG-.

When I can't find something on Spotify, I look for it on YouTube. The 'Tube has everything but the most elite and super-rare, so why doesn't it have this Killer Mike song? Sunday Morning Massacres was a big deal when I was coming up; why is it now so forgotten that one of my favorites is absent from the re-release and YouTube? Has 2008 Killer Mike been completely eclipsed by the Netflixin' 2016-present Bernie Bro?

We wanted an Ice Cube, kids. Within the contemporaneous rap culture wars, it was a victory for poptimist rap listeners to hear him rhyme rehab with rehab with rehab. 2008 was a different time.

The digital-minded, record-collecting losers on YouTube have helped me out of so many pickles. I figure I'm only repaying a debt by uploading this. Happy listens, and do enjoy the image of Killer Mike I appropriated from an PDF version of Ozone.

P.S.
To the people asking me to reupload the Rosco P. Coldchain compilation -- I will. It's a matter of weathering my old POS Dell; but for you, the beloved non-reader, I will try to try.

POST-DRILL LATE PASS

Is this drill? Not enough of a dirge. Reminds me more of my 13th favorite song, "Can't Stop Won't Stop" or Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like An Eagle", than some hardboiled drill shit.  Too much joy, as them Scarsdale boys used to say, and that's all the more disturbing. It's infectious, it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it!

Genre is useful, but more than anything it exists to make a critic's job easier and important sounding. Sounds more like some vanglorious G-shit over a Pi'erre Bourne beat than anything sniffing the shavings of drill, and yet those few-and-far-between e-critics who acknowledged the jawn called it drill for extra-musical reasons.

This came out in late 2017, when I was only in the early processes of retreating into my cave. Were critics afraid of getting done like The Stranglers did Philippe Manoeuvre if they gave the song a bad review? The song is too good to get a bad review. Was it cancelled on account of alleged misdeeds? I don't know what the rap-crit establishment's current position on IRL violence is, but bad optics didn't keep King Von off Pitchfork.

Who knows? Death of the artist is dead at this point in time, and I'm still sifting through the wreckage of collapsed post-structuralism. Ya boy ain't a Chicago insider of any kind, so he can only ask questions. Chuuuch.

RIP EBE BANDZ

Feels weird writing a RIP post for Bandz, 'cause I rarely even write RIP posts for artists who have meant a lot more to me. I have no profundities or answers to dispense when an artist I admire dies.

But about a week before he went missing he came back to my attention when this joint with A-Wax came up on Spotify shuffle. "First Thing" reminded me of two things: A-Wax's facility for songs of dirtbag melancholy, and the out-of-place chubby white kid in the "Demons" video who looked like an upper-middle FSU fratboy Rebecca Blackin' his way through a Chiraq fantasy. He claimed eastside Chicago and gang affiliation, but all that really mattered was he actually had some skill as a rapper.

Around the same time I was getting deep into the rabbit hole of the equally awful and impressive Chiraqology subreddit, where uncredentialed "insiders" and Swedish thugs catalog the byzantine cross-pollination of Chicago rap and the city's gangland underworld. Fact or fiction, these guys could be historians or true-crime writers if they ever get out of the streets or their grandmas' basement. I was reading these Heredditus's accounts of King Von sliding into K.I.'s DMs  and L'A Capone's body count when I read the news that EBE Bandz was missing.

Like any good crime story, the details were cryptic and gruesome. His house was trashed. Police thought his body might be locked in the trunk of his car. Although the car was parked in his garage, they couldn't open it short of a warrant or his consent. Was the body just rotting there on account of judicial process? Adding to the intrigue, prior to his disappearance Bandz allegedly pulled a gun on two young women, one of them 16, who objected to his uncle's (alleged) leers.

The rumor mill churned up its usual glut of cockamamie theories. Bandz was killed by rival rappers. Bandz was killed by rival gang members. Bandz was killed by collaborators or video mob-scene extras. Turns out it was a couple of nerds, one of whom was a friend and looks like a Latin Nick Mullen. They bludgeoned him with a baseball bat, set the body on fire, and left it in the woods of Winnebago County.

As with anyone's death, there's nothing I can say to give this resolution or meaning. I write this to remember a rapper whose songs I've enjoyed, and to relate the peculiar condition of being a rap fan on the internet in the year 2019.

THE RESULTS ARE IN: SCOOB IS THE FATHER OF YOUR STYLE!

Quit that racket about Chief Wayne or Lil Keef being the most influential artist of the past 10-15 years. Let the NBA Young Durks and Drake Boogie Wit Da Future Luccis battle out who popularized the R&B blues style we now accept as rap, cause all this time we've been ignoring the father of a quietly developing and persistent style of rap. I'm talkin' Big Daddy Kane weed carrier and back-up dancer extraordinaire Scoob, f/k/a Scoob Lover.

Ya boy checked out the Zelooperz album to see if it had any good songs besides the Earl Sweatshirt joint (it doesn't really, but it does have a welcome beatjack of Fat Joe's "Bad Bad Man"). Halfway through, I started noticing how Zelooperz often breaks into a muted version of that manic, nasal, cartoonish style Danny Brown uses to mixed effect. Come to find out Zoelooperz is a member of Bruiser Brigade. Connection is clear enough, right?

But then I'm listening to Pressa, and I hear that same annoying style Danny Brown does, right down to the elongated rhyming words delivered with squeaking emphasis. Detroit is close to Toronto. What are the odds?

I was weaving tenuous threads like a paranoiac tackling the Zapruder film until I realized where I'd originally heard the style: Scoob Lover, 1994. For the sake of tender eardrums, I hope the style doesn't infiltrate any further, but Scoob should get something out of its resurrection. For the price of a latte, we can make sure Scoob reaps the rewards. Let's get this man a motherfuckin Patreon.

CARPOOL KARAOKE WITHOUT JAMES CORDEN'S DISTENDED MARSHMALLOW ASS

The best rap video I've seen this year was recorded in 2008 (give or take), and it's Soulja Boy and some erstwhile weed carriers [a] karaoking "Vette Pass By."  Holy shit, what a relic. Everyone in oversized white shirts hanging out in front of a strip mall, basking in the grandeur of PEAK ERA GUCCI. This was before Soulja shot Goomp in the butt, before the rise and fall of swag-rap, before Arab got the face tats and fell out with SODMG, before Soulja boy Charla-memed his way back into semi-relevance.

I thought I'd be dead when Soulja Boy became Ice T, but here we are. What to make of Draco's career? Innovator or wave rider? Between '07 and '10 he's a Bowie character minus the pedophilia - lifted like a mother, but always had his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. The first two albums are blueprint-level documents of swag-rap, word to Drew Millard. You know all those grunge documentaries where the likes of Poison and Cinderella complain about how Nirvana ruined everything and sucked the fun away? Swag-rap was '80s hair metal, and now we're in the thick of Serious™blowback from dudes in Nirvana shirts. History repeats itself 'n' shit.

And don't forget to text WHOOP to 30303 to get "Whoop Rico" as your ringtone. God rest the DVD era. Excuse me while I kiss this low-ass bitrate.

[a]
Shouts to KatKillaLove for the fire comment


[b]
Apropos of nathan, but also in the video and a'ight.

SINGLES GOIN STEADY!

LIL BOOSIE & NBA YOUNGBOY - SOUTHERN SMOKE
Low-end innard tingler (nullus) from Old Man Boosie and Young Boy Youngboy. Bass certified to beat up your erogenous zones, coaxing the safe word from your lips with all the foresight of an impulse. This is the kind of intergenerational mono-regionalism that make a community-minded provincialist say, "Aye!"

Had to detox from Boosie after 2016's mixtape suite left the world blanched, so it's nice to find him in buoyant spirits. He says something about jambalaya, crawfish, and Mardi Gras, and that's enough for an all-purpose tourist like myself. Usually, the young swain NBA Youngboy allows me to indulge in my emotional side without sacrificing too much toxic masculinity, mine beloved crutch, but he is not singing sad songs here - instead he sings the chest-pounding song of self!



CHIPPASS & LARRY JUNE - BOUT ME
It's the year 2019, and it seems Chippass is doomed to make headbangers in moderate obscurity until his sun sets. It's not exactly the most marketable music. Lil Jon snuck it into the mainstream for a couple years at the peak of crunk, a feat only possible through a rare cocktail of media savvy and pop sensibility paired with a keen understanding of vaudeville's continuing thread in American entertainment. How does one explain "Knuck If You Buck?" Three 6 and Jon primed the moment and America was always hungry for a pop song with positive references to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. We didn't know, so we didn't ask.

Larry June closes things out with a forgettably somnolent verse. Is he an industry plant or just a relatively unsuccessful act who made the bad decision of signing with a major label? Whatever the case, let's hope his mysterious industry backing catapults Chippass into the pages of J-14 and the walls of lusty teenagers the world over. If not, we always have the #YangGang.

POST WRITTEN ON 2/7/19

BEST OF 2018

Rap Music Hysteria's in-house counsel, Alan Dershowitz, has advised us to expressly state that the following paragraph is a work of satire. The actions attributed to the names are fictionalized for comical incongruence. Except for one of them, who knows what he did.

Been off the map for the 2K18, but the spirit of mid/late-00s rap blogs compels me to submit my humble list. Jay Smooth showed up outside my window and did the cutthroat gesture. Sach from Oh Word left a bloody Mitchell & Ness in my bed. Brandon Soderberg said he'd leave me alone in a room with Das Racist. Eskay threatened to snap rap my pencil neck and turn my bones into Laffy Taffy. Noz said he was gonna record my death rattle, press it up on vinyl, write a blog touting it as random rap concrète, and flip it on eBay for megabucks. And O-Dub? He straight up threatened to exsanguinate me if I went derelict in my list-making. So here we go.

Mr. Dershowitz also suggested we add the following paragraph for "so-called full transparency, a rhetorical convention wherein the writer seduces his reader with a shallow yet ostentatious display of truthfulness."

End-of-year lists are just an excuse for the circle diddle-jerk to flex and posture, so I'ma be real: I added "Bloxk Party" to my list after consulting other lists, 'cause the CIA psyop department ain't airdrop that one to the cave I been living in. Don't know if I love Rico Nasty as much as everyone else, but I included her because I don't wanna be that rap blogger, even though I inescapably am. In the same vein, I added and removed Doja Cat's "Mooo!," cause that shit's just too goofy. I liked moo cows when I was a baby, but these days the only animals I fuck w/ are the water oxen I use to tend my rice fields. IDK, maybe she got bangers, but I'm not gonna act like I was crankin that Doja Cat all year. "Mo Bamba" is technically a 2017 song, so his dirge shall not appear. Blueface seems like a nice guy, but as I write this he's just an argument on my timeline, so he too punches a ticket to Club Omission.

No order but rough order, for the beginning is what came to my head first, but the middle and end are, perhaps, where the list gets more interesting. I'll see you when I see you.

raps
SOB X RBE - Carpoolin'
E-40, B-Legit, Stresmatic - Meet The Dealers
DB Tha General & Mistah F.A.B. - Dope Era
Husalah - Humpin'
Pusha T - If You Know You Know
Nipsey Hussle - Hussle & Motivate
YG, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Nicki Minaj - Big Bank
Chippass - Yang Style
Nef The Pharoah, 03Greedo, ALLBLACK - Ball Out
Lil Wayne & Swizz Beatz - Uproar
Lil Baby & Drake - Yes Indeed
City Girls & Cardi B - Twerk
Earl Sweatshirt - Red Water
Valee & Jeremih - Womp Womp
Tyga & Offset - Taste
Iamparis - We On
Rick Ross & Future - Green Gucci Suit
JPEGMAFIA - 1539 N. Calvert
Rich The Kid - Plug Walk
Shootergang Kony, Slimmy B, ALLBLACK - Warm Up
Ralo - Ahk Shit Pop Shit
Valee - Juice & Gin
Saba - GREY
Mozzy - Choke On Me
OMB Peezy - Love You Back
600 Breezy - Who Run It
SahBabii & 21 Savage - Outstanding
Pusha T - Story of Adidon
Gunna & Playboi Carti - YSL
Blvck Spvde, Zado, Bianca Fitzpatrick, Naaji Person - A Toast To The Quiet Life
Cupcakke - Quiz
YoungBoy Never Broke Again - Overdose
Junglepussy - Trader Joe
Camp Lo - Off The Astro
Tay-K - After You
Paris (not that one) - I Want It
Ab-Soul, Anderson Paak, James Blake - Bloody Waters
HD, Fe Tha Don, DJ Fresh - 98 Lexus
Kodak Black, Jadakiss, TXS - Mama
Chief Keef - Stars
70th Street Carlos - Sprite
ALLBLACK - P's & Q's
Kanye West - Yikes
Nickelus F - King Soulja
03 Greedo - For My Dawgs
Koran Streets - Fallin & Ballin
G Herbo & Southside - Focused
Rico Nasty - Smack A Bitch
Ronny J, XXXtentacion - Banded Up
Jay Critch & Harry Fraud - Thousand Ways
City Girls - I'll Take Your Man
WNC Ram Bam - G Warfare
Tierra Whack - Cable Guy
Adamn Killa & Z-Money - Cluckin'
MIKE & Adé Sayyed - Like Mask
Peewee Longway - Jumanji
BbyMutha, $hoey, Michael Da Vinci - Ungrateful
Ripp Flamez - Project Melodies (OML)
Iojii - hoo'dah
Sada Baby & Drego - Bloxk Party
Saul Williams - The Flaw You Worship
The Jacka, Ampichino, Rydah J. Klyde, Planet Asia - One Way In
E-40, G Perico, Vince Staples - Ain't Talkin Bout Nothing
Maxo Kream - Work
The Popper & Rich The Factor - Prospect Ave.
Saweetie, Rich The Plug, G-Eazy, London On Da Track - Up Now
P-Lo - Same Squad
Nas, Future, DJ Esco - Walk Thru
Lil Peep & XXXTENTACION - Fallin Down
Wifisfuneral - Alone As A Facetat
Sheck Wes - Chippi Chippi
Bay Swag - Saucin
Z-Money - Bitcoin
Juice WRLD - Lucid Dreams


other stuff
The Miami Miracle
Joe Pera Talks With You
LeBron in the semifinals and conference finals
Sorry To Bother You
Dwyane Wade: Game 2 against Philly
David Hammons: Bliz-aard Ball Sale by Elena Filipovic (Late 2017, but I read it in 2018, and we ain't gonna get much more current with tha book shit)
Brett Kavanaugh, under duress, defining excessive drinking as "whatever the chart says"
Project Pat at Churchill's
Love Is The Message, The Message is Death @ The Hirshhorn
Aaron Hernandez Gladiator series in The Boston Globe
Tom Brady losing to Nick Foles in the Super Bowl

old, not rap
The Mekons - 32 Weeks
Suicide - Misery Train
Universal Robot Band - Barely Breaking Even
Warehouse - Reservoir
Bumblebee Unlimited - Lady Bug
Orlando Contreras - Sabor de Engaño
Steve Harley & The Cockney Rebel - Cavaliers
A Raincoat - It Came in the Night
Red Alert - Take No Prisoners
Al Green - Lo And Behold
Baccara - Yes Sir I Can Boogie
Gary Numan - Metal
Soft Cell - Frustration
Marvin Gaye - T Plays It Cool
Neu! - Lila Engel
Alice in Chains - Grind
The Whatnauts - I'll Erase Away Your Pain
The Du-Ettes - Please Forgive Me
Max Roach - Garvey's Ghost
Lucho Gatica - El Reloj
Rowland S. Howard - Pop Crimes
Barrington Levy - Please Jah Jah
Bobby Womack - Secrets
Ennio Morricone & Joan Baez - Here's To You
Neil Young - I Am The Ocean
Grateful Dead - Althea
Donald Byrd - Love's So Far Away

VOLVO IS A GREAT CAR

Ridin' round in my brand new '99 / Fo' do',  Volvo!
Trick Daddy, "Shut Up," Book of Thugs: Chapter AK Verse 47

I always liked Trick Daddy, but as I grew to be a man of understated punk elegance, I began to appreciate some of his background idiosyncrasies. At a time when most rappers coveted butterfly-door Lambos or the Viper with the stripes, Trick was all about a Swedish soccer-mom sedan with more safety than the dry thrusts of a BYU dorm room (a/k/a da Provo Soak).

Through his words, I came to appreciate the boxy Scandinavian design of the sedans and station wagons that rocked the worlds of yuppie parents in the late-90s Eastern seaboard. Class is for men, swag is for boys! So I can't ride with DrakeO the Ruler when he casts aspersions on a fuckin JD Power legend. And it isn't just some nondescript slander. After dissing Volvo as a brand, a staff, and a record label, he sets his sights on Volvo's 1996 line.

FUCK

YOU

DRAKEO

Listen, bud, I never listened to your ass 'cause your name is literally some nickel-and-dime copyright dip. Back in 2003, my mans used to write a comic called DougH. It was the Bart The General of graphite-driven Doug comics. You are the DougH of rap. Drinking Sprite and Simply Orange on your album cover, what kind of message does that send to the kids? That it's cool to ingest too much sugar? FOH, beet juice is the real drink of champs.

DrakeO, I'm hoping you get free, but I'm warning you - when they hand you that bus pass and you're waitin for your ride, I'ma be training to fight you for what you said about the Volvo. And don't get it twisted. I might not look like a real humdinger, but like the Volvo I so love, I can take a damn beating.

DrakeO, you dress like Deadpool, and I will fight you. RAP MUSCHSE HYSTERIA OUT!

WHEN I B ON THA RAPID REALTY LISTINGS

Not to beat a dead horse, but to beat a dead horse, New York City is beat, not unlike a horse that is not living, a horse without pulse, a horse in cell decay - a dead horse. Blame Giuliani, blame David Schwimmer, blame third-way neoliberalism, but the shit is just fucked these days. Walk up Nostrand between Fulton and Flushing and you'll be traversing Maino territory, but it's more like walking down the yarn aisle at Michaels. You'll see as many clogs as Tims. It is what it is.

I been following the degradation of the bodega for a while. I'm sorta like a scholar.

"But mine is doing well!" you say. "They just remodeled and got some flatscreen TVs!"

Pish posh, MF. That shit'll be sold when the property value hits eight figures. Ask mom and pop about the East Village the next time you're at brunch.

But I digress. High on bath salts one poetic night, I passed the RAKIM _ 1997 _SOLO argument through the YouTube search function and viewed the "When I B On Tha Mic" video. Those '90s Rakim solo albums are a tombstone for something, but that's another post. In this video, Rakim and friends are gesticulating and lip-syncing in front of Nostrand Mini Market. I can't verify this, because the Google StreetView for 110 Nostrand Ave. shows a property bordering a parking garage, whereas the bodega in the video appears to be on a street corner, but the Yelp for Nostrand Mini Market sports this as its emblematic image: 

Is it a victory? Giuliani sacrificed children so bike messenger types could ride through Bed Stuy with impunity. But if I was head honcho? This fuck would be wearing a fitted MLB cap, jeans the size of air ducts, and a mustard pair of Tims. The bag would not exist, the coat would be Carhartt or North Face, and he would be putting up a Long Island crew in the most deserted back alley.

ON MEMPHIS RAP AND THE SONG OF THE SUMMER

For a complex of obvious reasons, Memphis rap fetishism has long been the province of art degenerates, edgelord punx, and non-racist metalheads, which is why I've always been gun shy about stanning for the venerable likes of DJ Squeeky and M.C. Mack.

What's that you say about the penultimate post? Allow me to remove my clip-on mohawk. Meant nothing, bought it from a costume store. I'll just put on the vintage FUBU jersey I usually wear. Yes, some say it's cyan, others say it's sky blue. You never know until you study color theory!

Post Lamone, you say? Never heard of her. No, mine isn't vintage in that sense, I've been wearing it since '97, it's vintage in the sense of age not provenance.

This FUBU jersey is so comfortable. When I put it on I feel at ease with the world, unlike the semiotically confused palefaces who stand behind their merch tables proffering harsh noise cassettes and Tommy Wright III shirts. Is it any wonder SpaceGhostPurrp can't stand the Yacubian devil? His old MuneyJordan YouTube channel, with its carefully curated underground Memphis playlists, gave birth to the Lil Ugly Manes and Sucide Men of the world. Memphis makes, the world takes and remakes.

Which is why I was surprised to hear Pretty Tony & 38 Slug's "Summer Drama" step away from the gothic and headbussa cliches of so much Memphian random-rap, giving us a summer song encompassing the minor glories and bullshit of a dog day's scene, underscored by the warm piano chords that made the "Player's Ball" reprise/remix so ineffably poignant (no homo).

Perhaps Schopenhauer said it best when he wrote, "The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain. And that Pretty Tony & 38 Slug shit? It makes a Krautta like me feel a certain kinda way.

"You know how Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J are always going on about the 'wicked shit' to describe Esham and whomever? I get it, local pride and all, but it's better applied to the Memphis underground, and 'Summer Drama' somehow weds the wicked shit with cookout music. It's apropos when you consider the whole of summer: you're out grilling schnitzel with your Krauttas as the murder rate rises."

I couldn't have said it better, Art.

SPACEX AGE PIMPIN

Ya man was mainly listening to the sounds of orca whales and gradual mental collapse in my blog sabbatical. You ever heard dopamine die? It sounds like Hopsin and Kweli made a mixtape.

So I missed the moment when the rap internet blew its collective nonbinary load for 03 Greedo. He's cool, but my load remains unspent. He's a Los Angeles rapper who does street rap that doesn't sound like LA street rap, and sometimes he sounds like Young Thug. Right? Hit me up if you got the answers, cause like Kindler, I guess I didn't get the mem-o.

Unfashionably, I've been listening to a fair amount of ALLBLACK, a pimp-rapper seemingly tailor made for the tastes of basement-dwelling blog boiz, who also seem to be the only people talking about ALLBLACK. Is pimp-rap dead? I suspect it can't go anywhere after Suga Free. ALLBLACK certainly won't reinvent it, but he adds a bohemian nose ring and ditches the high camp that often tempers the more unseemly aspects of pimp bardage. It's revisionist pimp-rap, stripping away the pageantry from the cold business of selling pussy. Will PC Culture take my precious pimp-rap? Time will tell, but know one thing: I'll dye (my hair blonde) for my entertainment (anonymously).

ALLBLACK is a bad rapper in, I think, a compelling way. He always lags slightly behind the beat, not unlike the fiendish shadow people who stalk my every move yet disappear like cowards when I turn to confront them (pour one out for Art Bell). On "Ball Out" he's joined by Greedo and '15 Martorialist Freshman Nef the Pharoah. Greedo ditches the vocal filters and delivers what's formally the strongest verse I've heard from him. Is my thinking swayed by the fact that he compares a vaginal scent to stroganoff? Yes, but he gallivants in a very lavish and outlandish manner, channeling Ezale at times.

Nef bats second in his Cheshire Cat style, which, though effective in bursts, hasn't been strong enough to sustain anything beyond a yearly single or two. The celestial counterpunch to Greedo's earthbound food metaphors is effective. ALLBLACK only handles the chorus, meaning we don't get to enjoy his good-bad rap stylings, which is good for some and bad for others. All in all, a magnificent song that helps to blot out the evil punk rumblings in my head for two minutes, eight seconds.