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

RAP GAME CRAZY, YADADAMEAN? STILL FINDING SLAPPS FROM 2015

Life is too short to listen to trash music just cause it came out in 2016. Lately I been feelin tha grim reaper breathin his stank breath on my neck, lookin over my shoulder tryna clown on my thirstiest DMs, and I realized I got tha entire corpus of recorded music at my fingertips. Shit's a continuum, you feel? Ain't no straight line blazing into the future, leavin the past in flames. We some flâneurs amblin through time, scanning ahead and watching our backs—lookin up for the time-birds droppin digital shits on our futuristic mohawk, checkin the obsolete code disintegrating on our deconstructionist Keds. Now pleezbaleev I ain't gonna go all fu-fu on ya ass and start listening to one of them wig-wearin pantaloon breeches ass 18th century Eurotrash bitch boiz diddling harpsichords and shredding harps. Baby steps, my G. Let's look back on some rap from 2015.

CHIPPASS - IDGAF (2015)



I got ya lady buggin, she crawl to me / She on my bone, I'm a thug, nice harmony

As a member of NhT Boyz, Chippass released some of the best raps of the past decade. Not that many people cared. Chippass's solo material is slightly more boilerplate-regional than his work with the Boyz. As to be expected, it lacks that rare symmetry of a group locking into the same plane, but effective networking and fun HBK-style cartoons depicting Chippass as former Atlanta Brave and Sandy Hook truther Chipper Jones might help him pop. Marketing: the 6th pillar in the temple of hip-hop!

How come Ezale seems poised to break out nationally, and Chippass is still on the local grind? Someone holla at Lord Jamar or DJ Akademiks to discuss this egregious example of AZN PRIVILEGE!

LA4SS - JAYSON TATUM (2015)



Bitch I eat my shrimp and steak in gravy / And I got crack just like the '80s

La4ss is the hottest thing to come out St. Louis since King Chingaling. Sometimes he raps in the standard post-drill + generic trap vein a lot of young rappers seem to favor. Other times he rap-sangs like Durk, or Dej, or even Kamaiyah! On "Jayson Tatum," La4ss situates himself in the pantheon of two venerable rap institutions: the surf-n-turf banger, the athlete apotheosis. Rather than mythologizing an established talent like Lil Cray on "Kyrie Irving," La4ss keeps it forward-thinking and local, invoking the name of St. Louis high-schooler and future Dukie Jayson Tatum. Futuristic swag indeed, but let's keep shit un-Bambaata and draw the line at ballers of legal age. Thank god the modern pederast innanet wasn't around to record "Ballin Like Kendall Marshall" in 2002.