BELIALZ REJECTZ

Honeycomb Hideout, nigga you be pickin em out
After I take my dick out, then we kickin em out
Stickin the flow, shrimp in my mouth
I won't pass, Ima show you what this pimpin about

Overlooked 2016 Jam now resurfacing on a collection of Ampichino duets. Like most things 'Chino, this is unpretentious roll-up-ya-sleeves rap executed with the professionalism of a plumber who'll unclog ya toilet, hand you a reasonable bill, and sell you a li'l blow while he's at it. A chipmunk soul sample and the back-and-forth patter of two MCs trading greezy quotables on bitches: word to Phil Oakey, these are the things RAP MUSIC HSYTERIA! dreams are made of.  Holla at ya engraver, this one deserves a spot in the hallowed halls of the Honeycomb Hideout.

WATCH FOR DA HOOK

HBK of Doughboyz (a/k/a Kiddo) back wit a solid sophomore outing. It's hard to recover from getting snuffed on film, but HBK's resilience should serve as inspiration for anyone who's been jumped by the metaphorical 15 goons that we call life. "Should I" is just a quality top-down Jay & Jermaine gettin gay in the "Money Ain't A Thing" video type banger, a song you could play as you drive up the West Side Highway in your '95 Miata doin it N.O.R.E.'s way and throwin ones in the air on that Raloesque humanitarian tip, some flossin type shit from a man old enough to remember when Cristal was the preferred fizzy wine, before they got racist and mothafuckas started drinking Ace of Spades or whatever.

You know I like that hardbody Detroit shit as much as the next blogbro, but sometimes I need to take a break from snatching chains and let my luscious bowl cut blow in the wind like Thelma and/or Louise. Chuuuch, my friends, CHUUUUUUUUUUCH.

OLD A BAY BAY

Rode the snake from the Creek Boyz lake on this one. Let's get one thing straight: "With My Team" is a certified byanger, got pathos out the anus, but a lotta bloggas out here acting like it's a solemn-faced ode to friendship and nothing else. That's a selective reading. Right after thanking God he's not on a tshirt, Turk P. Diddy is back on his bullshit, reminiscing on a bitch who'll let the whole crew run train on her. Group sex expresses some form of male companionship, but it ain't something Teddy Roosevelt would encourage.

Young Fedi Mula (good postmodern rap names, these guys) spends the majority of his verse ranting about freak hoes. This does not bother me. I rock myself to sleep with problematic content. But to deliberately misrepresent the material is not just dishonest and manipulative, it ignores the fact that good rap in the post-gangster era is about contradiction and tension. Moments of extreme profundity are countered by lines of equal crassness; elegies become orgies. This is good.

Long touted as the nü Brooklyn, Baltimore's rap surge could be a curse as much as a blessing. Picture twenty years in the future: the Baltimore Sun runs an incendiary article on the privileged yuppies living in Young Moose's childhood home. Yeah, it's crazy. But remember: they got gourmet cheese in Bed Stuy.

BallGreezyOfficialVevo

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 FUTURE OF IGNORANCE

What happened to ignorance? In the early oughts J-Zone assembled the urtext of ignorant rap, a testament to the imaginative power of grotesque sex and reprehensible values. Like a rap game 120 Days of Sodom, the songs are a sometimes hilarious, sometimes disquieting catalog of human urges at their most debased.

Lil Pump may not be able to suck his own dick, but he is fashioning a rap that is literally ignorant. There is nothing unsophisticated or unaware about the Ign'ant fraternity's exhaustive odes to bad morals, rendered in an aficionado's vivid detail, whereas Lil Pump's claim to ignorance rests on recycled Lil B tropes and self-proclamation. Even so, his preoccupation with ignorance is weirdly historical, just as his pared down, repetitive, turnt-up approach evokes a regional lineage not apparent at first glance.

Do I fully understand Lil Pump's appeal? Ya mans ain't Jared Fogle; I hear a Miami teenager, one missed Xan away from a seizure, channeling Famous Dex and Lil Yachty. But his commitment to extreme repetition and brevity sets him apart from his contemporaries, suggesting that one day, if he doesn't evaporate in fiber optics as quickly as he materialized, he might define new limits of deliberate stupidity.

Selected comments from Lil Pump's "Flex Like Ouu" short film:

TROY AVE IS ONE OUTRAGEOUS DUDE!

Troy Ave was never as bad or as good as people said he was. I'll admit, the guy is not perfect. Between ridiculing a paranoid schizophrenic's suicide, Masta Killing a well-known blogger (allegedly!), and Shyne Po'ing up da club (allegedly!), he somehow found time to become the Poochie of NYC Rap Saviors, shoved down the throats of an undeserving public by trusted guardians of the culture like Rob Mark Man and Brian "B, Dot" Millgram. He could have been another Hot 97 charity project, dropping the occasional ill mootsarel sliceadicciano amidst a sea of dollar slices; instead he became test subject for tastemakers overestimating the scope of their influence.

"Never Switch" is a glimpse of what could have been: a hybrid of 50 Cent and Foxy Brown for the mumble-rap era, garnished wit da oregano and pepper flakes of a Lady of Rage or Shawnna. The NYC Deep State thought they was slick pullin some collusion shit, but da invisible hand spoke and gave us Young M.A. Now pour a li'l Manischewitz out for Milton Fried Mane.

LARRY JUNE: INDUSTRY PLANT?

Father forgive me if I'm speakin outta line, but wasn't this fellow making trap music not too many moons ago? Warner Bros. says he's an SF native who took a pit stop in Atlanta, but isn't that exactly what a conglomerate lookin for full market saturation would say? He even toured w/ the lomatia tasmanica himself. Now he's kickin laid-back pimp-raps and droppin explicit RBL Posse references. In his defense, he was collaborating with Iamsu! and Mitchy Slick even back when he was tryna sound like Lil Wayne splicin DNA with the Gucci Clone.

Whatever, the song is a Jam, despite the creeping feeling of false reality and liberal Kush & OJ-isms. Da guy got songwriting chopz, word to Clyde Carson. Larry June takin it back to the days of Sammy, Walt Mink, and Hum!