Been traversing the past so intensely, I got snow in my goggles and missed out on 420 Project Vol. 2, the NhT Boyz mixtape that dropped last week. Honestly, ya boy ain't the biggest fan of weed raps. Its legalization in certain states, and the monetization of a formerly outlaw market, has turned getting high into a respectable pastime and career. Wiz Khalifa is Sammy Hagar singing about tequila. Snoop's blunt is Bob Hope's golf club.
But when a group is involved, the drain-circling of a man trapped by stage persona alchemizes into the excitement you felt when you and ya boys was rollin' lopsided joints in the back of a hooptie driven by a 35 year-old man named Jesús. It's a rap truism: the tight-knit group is always greater than the solo artist. The tape sags toward the end, but not before pandering to my taste with two Cash Moneyhomages. Ima leave it to this Soundcloud user to describe the sound of NhT Boyz breaking into the "Get Your Roll On" chorus:
Groups planning to make another mixtape about smoking weed, please consider writing a concept album about steak and shrimp.
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.
