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.

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Who let these new kids in? I see them with their Thrasher shirts, prescription pills, and prostate-stimulating repetition. What happened to the days when Trick Daddy and Gunplay tried minting Florida rap with a lyricist's imprimatur? SoundCloud rap is just dexontextualized postmodern appropriation, which proves we've reached the end of culture. Right? Yes. No.

Cry if you want, or blame someone. Not Rick Ross - he exists in a geohistorical void of his own making. It's Spaceghostpurrp. Not just the father of all these reprobates, he is their direct link to the old school ("I'd bring Markese with me to the studio," Morrison says. "He'd just sit and watch Disco Rick work the engineering board. It definitely got Markese's attention."). Now we have a traceable lineage, now we have cause and effect, and we can sleep easily at night knowing that the problematic rock bricolage of a Xxxxtentacion isn't that far away from "Fuck Around The Clock" or "Do Wah Diddy", and Little Pump and Smoke PUrple circle around the same blown-out absurdist drain as "Let's Get Muthafuckin' Stupified" and "Smurf Rock."

Raider Klan inaugurated a distinct break from the half-thizzy club anthems of yesteryear (despite Denzel Curry honoring Bizzle on "Envy Me"). Whether this was a deliberate aesthetic choice, or an effect of generation gaps, urban sprawl, personal enmities, or insider/outsider industry politics, it marks a splintering - a rupture. Existing parallel to Raider Klan and their children, traditionalists like Ice Berg, Lil Dred, and Mike Smiff continue producing content steeped in familiar conventions. Like Kodak Black, who combines new-gen meme literacy with older rap styles, Ballgreezy stands between movements but remains outside them, continuing in a post-jook mode while softening its Dionysian edges with grown-man world-weariness. At times he resembles one of the mournful songmen of today; this might be the case, and yet Greezy was crooning before Wayne and Kanye broke down the R&B doors and liberated moping for the kids of today.

Who will unite the Florida factions? Who will be the self-conscious Jay-Z or RZA attempting to bridge the gap of false binaries, long after anyone cares? I see a fat man in the distance. Who is he? He smells of wings. It's Rick Ross, the man without a country. He holds the key - interlocking Wingstop gift cards. They represent money, fame, industry clout, and $50 worth of Wingstop product at any Wingstop location. As of this writing, he is the key who unites the various schools.

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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?

THE ANNOTATED BALLGREEZY

Talk slander on RAP MNUSIC HSYTERIA! all you want. We are, and will continue to remain, the number one source of BallGreezy news and analysis on the net! This post is gonna get a little Coconut Grove Grapevine on ya ass, so we're going to divide it into digestible components. Chuuuch.

ABSTRACT
BallGreezy returns with his best song since "Shone" or "Jook Wit Me." Or does he? On repeat listens, it sounds more like a world-weary "Lifestyle" rip than escape from jook bastille. Jim Jones plays wingman, proving once again that he needs a Cam or Biggavelz to bring out the Capo gold.

REAL MIAMI? WHAT REAL MIAMI!?
It's a cliche that rap videos are full of lies and cliche, but ya bougainvillea can bring out concrete evidence in this instance. In the over-long intro, Jim Jones trots out the ol' "Yeah, y'all been to South Beach, but you haven't crossed that bridge and seen the real Miami!" trope that Trick Daddy and Trina seem to love so much. Only Trick Daddy was talking about real hoods, whereas the "Feel My Pain" video is shot in some of the nicest neighborhoods in Miami. Here's BallGreezy driving down scenic Coral Way (FIG. I), which is simply a MUST if you want to see cool overhanging jungle trees and shit.

FIGURE I

After taking in all those banyans, Greezy ends up in the hardscrabble Roads district. Next thing you know he's lavishing bae with ice water AND straws at Mary Brickell Village (FIG. II), an upscale mall in a rich yuppie neighborhood.

FIGURE II

 
Throughout the video he's tooling around Wynwood (FIG. III) on an ATV. Wynwood is an art-themed planned community designed by Tony Goldman, a late real-estate tycoon also known as the architect of SoHo. It's also where the vast majority of Miami rap videos are shot, because it's full of colorful "street art" and has become the new South Beach for Miami's bright young things. Wynwood was once a crack-infested Puerto Rican neighborhood, and still borders on some rough neighborhoods, but for all the capital it generates and receives, it might as well be a galaxy away. Or IDK, it might be Midtown, which is the same thing as Wynwood except dumber. So what "real Miami" is you really talkin' about, Jim Jones?

FIGURE III

NO MORE GRAFFITI!
Speaking of which, rap video directors need to stop trying to create "grit" by filming their subjects in front of graffiti. In almost every major metropolis, the graffiti hotbeds are neighborhoods populated by hip, young college graduates with a good amount of money and friends who went to art school. Rap video directors continue to use these neighborhoods because (a). they live in these neighborhoods, (b). they are stupid, (c). they are both.

FIGURE IV

This is BallGreezy standing in front of an abandoned, graffiti-ed motel-style apartment complex, which is probably the most authentically Miami thing about this video. To the right of his glorious dreads (also authentically Miamian), you can see the weird, ugly graffiti of UNIQ, who was recently conscripted into a beef between some New York and Miami writers. Elements of hip-hop, B! Graffiti has as much in common with acid-rock as hip-hop, but whatevskis. There were a few days of entertaining cross-outs, and a lot of barbs were traded on Instagram and YouTube, but it wasn't exactly CAP MPC vs. NYC. The beef was ultimately squashed in an electronic fashion, proving once again that adult men who write their nicknames in bubble letters on other people's property are basically stupid.