BALLGREEZY FAN PAGE

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.

POST-REGIONAL REGIONAL LOOKIN GLOBAL

Things done changed since the 2 Live and Gucci Crews ruled Dade County. When 808 kicks fell out of vogue, the identity of Miami rap splintered into something incoherent and upsetting: the fatboy yacht-rap of Rick Ross, Pitbull's tawdry ¡Latino!™ pap, Flo Rida's corporate team-building pop-rap. With the (arguable) exceptions of Trick Daddy and the Raider Klan, the only true regional sound has been on underground dance songs - the blurred lines of stick, jook, and the grey area between fast music and Philly wu-tang.

In 2015, Denzel Curry recontextualized stick music to surrealist effect on "Underwater." Kiddo Marv welds the same local influence to the Haitian roots-fusion Wyclef mines when he's not mining his charity. Past experience shows this kind of thing can turn quickly into gimmickry; but already responsible for the most recent local classic, it might be the Haitian contingent who rehabilitates Miami rap.

QUARTER-SEASON AWARDS

We anti-Grammys, anti-Oscars, and very anti-Golden Razzies for slandering my mans Brian De Palma. But my therapist was tellin me, "Yo, you need to be more positive." I said, "A'ight doc, Ima be more positive, but can it involve rap music?" He says, "That's that monomania we was talkin about, bruh." I jumped up and did a bell kick off the couch. "Thanks for curing me, duke. I know what I gotta do now. Quarter-season awards on RAP MUSIC HYSTERIA!" I skipped down the stairwell, looking back toward his office as I vacated the building. I could hear him ripping his hair out the follicle. From sheer joy, I imagine!

A$AP ROCKY AWARD: KAMAIYAH!



Like Rocky with LiveLoveA$AP, Kamaiyah dropped a very good pop-rap album after seducing the press in record time. LiveLoveA$AP and A Good Night In The Ghetto are softened versions of regional sounds, helmed by able and essentially inoffensive rappers with marketable qualities. The difference is that Kamaiyah has a lot more potential than Rocky ever did. She's a better rapper, her songs are better, her hooks are bigger, and it doesn't appear that she has a Yams in her ear svengaling dat ass like Frank Farian did Rob & Fab. Most importantly, she won't need a 2Chainz and Drake-infused pork barrel to get a national hit. The moves she makes in the coming year will determine whether she has a fruitful music-making career, or becomes a glorified jeans ad who occasionally raps.

TRINIDAD JAMES AWARD: LIL YACHTY!

Like Trinidad James before him, Lil Yachty blew up off a catchy song that was controversial for the Is he or isn't he? mental retardation games it played, an ambiguity that only deepened upon discovering the artist's questionable choices of wardrobe and accoutrements. Except Trinidad James had a genuine hit where Yachty only has the attention of bloggers and Twitter buzzards, who see him as a symbol or sideshow or something. I must admit, I was eatin pork and rinds with a bitch from New York Times / I don't eat no pork and rinds but that bitch was mighty fine, is a great couplet with subtle old-school simplicity, but it ain't quite Pop a molly I'm sweatin! (Woo!). Best case scenario: next Soulja Boy. Neutral case: wins a Grammy in 2020 for lending a line to Ed Sheeran. Worst case: becomes a protege of Jello Biafra.

HERMAN MELVILLE "YOU DON'T DESERVE ME" AWARD: BOOSIE!

OK, so back in the day Herman Melville wrote some adventure books that were pretty popular. He's sellin alright and whatever, so he decides to drop a big sprawling work called Moby Dick on everyone's head. The critics and public is just like, "Nah, hold that." He stops writing altogether and deprives the world of his precious musings on whales. This is basically the indignity Boosie has suffered in 2016 with his dense, uneven, occasionally brilliant trio of releases. They are mostly not fun, he is old, and they don't really fit any of the day's talking points. Here's hoping Boosie doesn't retreat from rap into the life of a government clerk, but if he does: It was all of our fault! Counting down till someone resuscitates that obnoxious LISTEN TO GHOSTFACE shirt for Boosie.

THE GHOST OF POSTRACIAL AMERICA MEMORIAL AWARD: EZALE AND DENZEL CURRY!

We got Ezale droppin N-bombs like it's nathan. Denzel Curry has a song called "Gook" with the unparsable lyric I'm a gook! See me growing out my hair cause I look like the nigga from Roots. This is what thinkpiece writers was dreamin about during Obama's first term!

YG OR DB? AWARD: MOZZY!

Mozzy is getting wild overexposed in certain quarters of the Rap Internet, and this blog is as guilty as anyone in that department. This puts him in roughly the same place as DB Tha General was a while back, except Mozzy is already more popular nationally than DB ever was. His pop instincts are sharper, though it's hard to imagine someone as raw as Mozzy having mainstream hits like DB's California Livin compadre YG. Ya boy's in the kitchen poppin Orville Redenbachers, waiting to see how this shit goes down.

BLOGGER O' DA MONTH: ANU!





Big up to tha gah for uploading Stresmatic's 1-2 punch of "The Joog" and "The Lick" off the quality Matic LP. Bigger ups for making it through Kap G's new tape and finding "Southside," because I had already shut it off by then. Kap G: hardest Mexican rapper since SPM went to his last sleepover!

DENZEL CURRY, SO HOT RIGHT NOW!

 

hit me with ur rhythm sword

Just when u thought u was safe from Curry jokes now that the NBA skeezon in the bag, Denzel Curry drops a double EP like he a post-hardcore band or sum shit.  When I ain't on South Beach tryna get my skin a nice butter-leather consistency (my body will be turned into a Birkin bag upon death), I'm biggin up the local talent makin waves in this cold world.  305 till I die or a life-changing event requires relocation is wat I always say.  I wanted to fux wit SGP more than I did, wasn't really feelin the gimmicky level fuckery or his Tommy Wright mixed wit Malachi The Nutcracker delivery, but in retrospect I gotta respect the legs he gave to a micro-movement.  Gotta hand it to him for releasing a record on 4AD, but Kanye already did the Factory tribute on 808s so whatever mane.

Denzel Curry been a solid 3.5/5 artist since whenever I decided to pay attention to him, 3 years ago maybe?  IDK.  My main problem with him is the same problem I got with all the other Raider Klansmen, namely a kind of rootlessness to the sound, not exactly ahistorical but ageographical for lack of an actual word.  I get it, I dig the spooky Memphis shit too, but it ain't only where you at it's also where you from.  So I'm pleased with "Delusional Shone" for reproducing the regional on a release marked for worldwide export (cf. "No Shone" by Chad & Lil Dred, "Shone" by Ball Greezy, current Jim Jones WC and future first-ballot member of da Rap Name Hall of Fame).  "Underwater" seethes with the kind of mystical-meets-political, hood-noir poetics once purveyed by Goodie Mob, but it also got ya boy stickin all over the room, feelin like Duckie with Gucci goggles in this motherfucker, u feel?  Free ya ass and ya mind will follow.

The Internet's a great tool for organizing and politickin, but it's a different animal than provincialism's community of constraint - for better or worse.  Ya boy will never stop carryin the flag for regional stylez, and Denzel pleased this tender heart even if no one else give a fuck.  Emotional connections mane, shit ain't rational but they magical.