The New, The Old, and The Dusty

The New, The Old, The Dusty is an ongoing series highlighting hip-hop records from different decades and finding thematic, sonic, or spiritual connections between them.    

Written By: Anthony Seaman 

            The 90’s East Coast-West Coast tensions have somehow found a way to be historically overblown and understated at the same time. Few documentaries will talk about the seedlings planted by Tim Dog’s “Fuck Compton”, Mobb Deep’s “Drop A Gem On ‘Em”, or how LL Cool J was involved at all. Some of these would be minimal to the eventual 2Pac and Biggie related war, but left a sour taste in the mouth of the West that took many murders, jumpings, diss records, and subtle warnings to pass. The crux of the entire beef was a Death Row vs. Bad Boy situation that trickled down to Mobb Deep, Capone-N-Noreaga, Keith Murray, and King Sun (*extremely accurate Deuce voice* WHO?). It poisoned the well of hip-hop luminaries for a generation by taking two impactful multi-talented leaders, and led to minimal meaningful collabs between the coasts for years. Certain acts worked during the strenuous period (Method Man famously working with B.I.G. and 2Pac while they were alive and at odds), but high level East-West collabs didn’t come into fruition as often as one would hope. The ones we have should be cherished for not only the willingness to bury old wars, but to find middle grounds between two sonic and spiritual bases that clash in every way.

Public Enemy feat. Big Daddy Kane & Ice Cube - “Burn Hollywood Burn” (1990)

Ice Cube going solo was a cataclysmic event in the history of rap music. Not only was rap's first defiant gangster rap outfit gutted of it’s best writer, it made a true icon out of Cube. Amerikkka’s Most Wanted went on to define an era, thanks to production from the East Coast mad scientists The Bomb Squad, the heartbeat and brains of Public Enemy, hip-hop’s political torch bearers, guided by their booming vocal leader Chuck D. Also on the record was Big Daddy Kane, idling at the most significant crossroad on his career path. Scorching hot and still held in the highest esteem of contemporary hip-hop royalty thanks to ‘89’s It’s A Big Daddy Thing, but already beginning the recording process of the R&B leaning heartbreaker that was Taste Of Chocolate. “Burn Hollywood Burn” was a once in a generation meeting of the minds that pointed it’s infrared beam to Hollywood execs and writers continuing a history of racist tropes, bigoted Hollywood cops, the struggles of black actors with bigger dreams, as well as a call for black folk to start “making our own movies like Spike Lee”. Greater than the audio is the visual attached to the song, featuring all 3 MC’s (plus skits from Flavor Flav) putting boot to concrete within rioting streets and tight movie seats. The video slices in clips from films across Hollywood's history. Mammy. The Ghost Walks. Imitation of Life. These “cinematic classics” featuring black face, mammy-ism, and lynchings are shown on screen, ending with Ice Cube burning the theatre to the ground. Cube went on famously to write, star and direct in films himself, typically doing it his own way bucking these tropes, making movies filled with rising black stars in comedy and traditional cinema while giving slices of a more realistic black experience. Plus a couple “so bad they’re good” action movies along the way. Flavor Flav’s future in reality TV has its own issues, but “Burn Hollywood Burn” is an evergreen testament that is a few proper noun switches away from fitting the narratives of rich whites profiting off of black culture in any medium, as well as one of the strongest collaborations of its era. 

Del The Funky Homosapien feat. El-P - “Offspring” (2000)

    Cube was (and for many still is) the face of gangster rap and early 90’s hip-hop as a whole, and was so powerful that he could put on any rapper and make them a star (besides Yo-Yo of course). His cousin, Del The Funky Homosapien, was a counter to Cube. Valuing the craft of making dire rap records and having DNA connections is where their similarities ended. Cube was a stone cold anarchist while Del was a thoughtful stoner who never leaned into the coasts hyper violent Raider cap adorning aesthetic. Solo and as a member in Hieroglyphics he made history and carved an alternative underground sound one multi-sylablistic verse at a time, with tentacles of influence stretching worldwide. His growth as a beatmaker led to him taking on the brunt of his 4th project Both Sides Of The Brain, until he turned to another underground God, El-P, for a one off track. When inspired the individuals could unravel parables with more layers than the Earth's crust, but instead they tossed any true concept to the side to do backflips over consonants and restructure vowels to rattle any sane listener. The illustrious gumbo of references to synthesizers, Columbine, weed, Street Fighter, and Dr. Strangelove for 4 minutes and 20 seconds is overwhelming on its face, much less when you dig into the sea of linguistic feats that define their craftsmanship to this day.

A$AP Rocky feat. ScHoolboy Q - “Brand New Guy” (2011)

            The internet highways and ProTools made collaboration effortless in the ‘10’s, allowing for mixtapes to be full of cross state collabs that live on in history. “Brand New Guy” from 2011 classic LiveLoveA$AP is the penultimate example of a post-regional rap hit. Within the first 30 seconds you get a DJ Screw (Houston, TX) indebted modulated intro, shoutouts to Lil B (Berkeley, CA) and Lil Wayne (New Orleans, LA) all over a beat crafted by Don Cannon (Philadelphia, PA) and Lyle Leduff (Atlanta, GA) that holds the dark alley eeriness of a Hell On Earth (Queens, NY) deep cut and the chippy bravado of a Gucci Mane (Atlanta, GA). Featured is Black Hippy hitmaker ScHoolboy Q (Carson, CA) and A$AP Rocky himself (Harlem, NY) doing a Jadakiss and Styles P (Yonkers, NY) indebted back-and-forth along with their own standout verses. Q spends his airtime highlighting the East Coast MC’s that made him who he is while Rocky works to build his mystique as a street certified fashionista. There was a conscious understanding of the gravity of what they were doing, based on what they still hadn’t done. Both guys were unproven, at the time of the recording damn near unknowns, and still undefined to the public in their own artistry. Q hadn’t left the West Coast as far as rap circles went and both were plotting to establish themselves under the growing shadows of the artists who popped off only a few years before them. The crop of artists from ‘08-’13 that established themselves brought on one of the largest talent booms the genre had ever seen, and the competition forced new angles to be taken. Barring each other out wasn’t enough, they had to shake concert halls and set blogs on fire. The single lives on as the beginning (and for my money, the best) in a long line of collabs over the following decade, where they grew into themselves while still holding on to a musical kinship that lies amongst the greats.

MIKE feat. Larry June - “Golden Hour” (2023)

            MIKE has always rapped like a black cloud is pouring upon him while Larry spits like the spring showers never hit his neck of the woods. The two are bellowing representations of their own smoked out galaxies, light years apart from one another. Instead of finding a middle ground, the two travel into Larry’s World. The Alchemist isn’t putting fingers to drum pads but the Beverly Hills native who studied under Cypress Hill before getting a true solo break with Prodigy and Havoc acts as the wormhole between the two phenoms. MIKE’s dreary visions have brightened over the years, but this is a full turn to the summery sides of life. One where flexing about ‘04 Chanel pieces and splurging “only on the black stripper” can make you “Obama in your city”. You can stare long enough at both of these rappers' career arc to see a pattern that makes them more similar than their dispositions would allude to. Both peaking after years of being prolific critical darlings, dropping cult classics like coins in a wishing well. You recognize their sound everywhere, even if they aren’t lone inventors of it; unlike their predecessors they’ve mastered who they are and created an assembly line-like efficiency in their rollouts. Even breaking into the tiers of mid-major rap stardom can take nearly a decade, but now that they’re solidified in their ranks, creative risks like this can flow more freely for both. Does this open the door for MIKE to be on a Larry album, as a feature or (in a more exciting turn) as a producer? Larry June could fit over any number of past MIKE cuts (“More Gifts”, “Center City”) and to hear MIKE on a remix for “Corte Madera, CA” would make the A/C in any car blow colder through the summer months.

Modern Review: My Turn (Deluxe)

Score: 3/5 | Released: February 28th, 2020

Written By: Anthony Seaman

                

            My Turn created an unfortunate myth about Lil Baby. The myth of assured greatness. At the time it seemed right; his catalog of hits alongside Gunna were stacking up, the Drake stimulus package worked like a charm (“Yes Indeed”), “Freestyle” became certified in the rap-along lexicon, all while holding the exclusive title of being a Top 3 Young Thug prodigy (at this moment Gunna and SahBabii could do no wrong, while Youngboy took up #4 while the world adjusted to his enigmatic ways). Baby’s previous major release, Harder Than Ever had a refreshing range of street records while the mixtape Street Gossip was a more ominous universe featuring heavy hitters Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, Offset and Meek Mill forcing his lyrics to be the center of it all. It was exciting to see Atalnta diversify broad enough to mix a traditionalist in with so many boundary pushers, and with many of rap titans beginning to lose touch or grow more inconsistent, you could envision a future with him among the top stars. After successful singles, interviews, features, and music videos, My Turn became one of the few 2020 albums to get a proper rollout pre-lockdown. The Southern US as a whole was also one of the few sections of the modern world with loose enough restrictions that bars and large gatherings could go on without institutional backlash, allowing his invigorating party tracks to thrive as they were meant to. In the early period where everyone was still figuring out how long exactly we’d be living within our own confines there was less music being released and by pure lack of challengers, Baby’s trajectory hit overdrive. My Turn was 2020’s highest selling rap album and the most streamed album in the US over the calendar year. Everything had worked out in his favor. After its release the coronation of Lil Baby as the new generation's leader was all but completed. Fans adored him, peers respected him, and the potential to grow and expand his skill set seemed boundless. The most important distinction this time period gave him was also adding a notch in his belt that his rap partner Gunna did not have, a breakout studio album. Gunna’s Drip Season 3 was an immaculate mixtape that eclipsed any of Lil Baby’s solo work, while Drip Or Drown 2 (his official major label debut) was a moderate success. Gunna’s style was also more encompassing of fresh sounds thanks to the melodic nature of his delivery, opening doors into more inventive sonics. For the first time in their respective careers, Baby had lunged for the spotlight on his own, and was fully basking in its beams.

            Now, a perfectly fine collab project with Lil Durk exists and the high stakes affair that was It’s Only Me served in chart success but is in majority an album made to line digital recycle bins. Atlanta’s chosen heir fell flat. The cracks in his style in retrospect were right in front of our faces. His rapping falls more into an equivalency with one of those Fear Of God ESSENTIALS hoodies; to a casual consumer it’s a higher quality of a necessity we tend to take for granted, but at the end of the day it’s still just a pricey plain hoodie that represents nothing if not just having some more money.  What marks his greatest weakness is the Lil Baby word cloud is limited to designer brands and every phrase typed into 40oz Van’s cursed tweets. Song to song the rhymes blend together, which some would call a stylistic choice while in actuality it seems like a factory defect in his instinctual ways. The lyrics are rushed recounts of his days hustling without any drawn out soliloquy about why he’s living this life. Wear expensive watch, rap about expensive watch. Miss old girlfriend, sing about missing old girlfriend. It’s all very much in the street rap tradition; what’s understood doesn’t need to be overstated, it just is what it is at the end of the day. You just do these things to survive and it’s what you’ve seen every rapper before you has ever done and the novelty of those daily oddities is the sub-genre’s greatest asset. Regurgitating that second layer of comprehension only limits the amount of bars that could be given to something topically different and shiny. The biggest mystery of the album lies in how he was getting eaten alive by every feature. How the same guy who pushed J. Cole to the limit and outdid Drake on 2 separate occasions gets stumped by Moneybagg Yo will never cease to amaze me. 42 Dugg had his breakout moments on “Grace” and “We Paid”, “Commercial” shows him committing a fool's errand in trying to out-cool Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Wayne body bags Baby so brutally on “Forever” that him running around a year later claiming to be “the new Wayne of his generation” should have warranted legal action. Even Moneybagg Yo, a living parody of what a southern rapper is “supposed” to be, stands on equal footing with go-to producer Tay Keith providing a home game experience for the curiously rising Memphis spitter.

            In context to his own catalog My Turn is an 70-30 mixture of his two previous projects, with Street Gossip being the majority ruler. Breaking out of the dime-a-dozen Youtube beats that take up the majority of My Turn we get the orchestral hurricane of “Forever”, the jutting bop of “Sum 2 Prove”, and the eerie paranoia of the Project Pat produced “Gang Signs”, all of which have his most inspired writing.  “The Bigger Picture”, “Catch The Sun” and “Emotionally Scarred” are breakaways from the grit and grind of street life where social justice, love and emotional complexity breathe. Records like these give a perception of range, but is it an illusion? Is there still many layers to unfold within Lil Baby the artist, or has it been forever stifled underneath countless layers of foreign denims and factory grown diamonds? There’s an aversion to anything musically challenging on the tracklist for more than 2 songs at a time, forcing him to redistribute his focus from every other attribute purely into his flows. Raw instinct has always been the gasoline that fuels his artistry. Despite all the drum programming sounding similar in sound selection and even patterns, Baby instantly sniffs out the most pleasing oddball pockets to spruce up his mediocre environments. Once he or the listener is even slightly becoming distracted away by a text notification or paint drying, the angle he’s attacking the beat at is slanted to such a strange degree that only your gut would tell you works. To be just fine in so many areas while a savant in one aspect for any other rapper would leads to stale creations, and the fact each song hits just enough to keep you coming back shows how much charisma he harnesses individually. He leads the league in fun verses to rap along to. You never question if he’s fronting about his street certifications.

            2020 ended up as a year where Lil Uzi Vert was a streaming colossus, Boldy James outworked and outrapped (almost) everyone, and Lil Baby was vaulted into S-Tier superstar status despite the world burning around them all.  Within our brain fog Lil Baby's simple and addictive style allowed him to become the biggest rapper in the world. We saw someone who had built up enough trust, strike at a moment so perfect he couldn't have planned it. God herself put a GIA certified sparkle to our eyes, blinding us to the fragility of Baby as an artist. He was never the best option, he was just one of the last ones to squeeze in before the ship sailed. There’s still hope that the circumstances that allowed Baby to infiltrate such a high stature weren’t as flukey as the evidence suggests. Maybe it was going to come either way, the pandemic sped it up, and the slump that followed was going to come anyway. Maybe he is the star that peaked Young Thug’s interest and sparked a belief that he saw a natural rapper living within a gambling street legend was true all along.

Best Song: "We Paid"
Best Beat: "Forever"
Best Moments: Every 42 Dugg whistle, Lil Wayne on “Forever”, Baby having to explain to his niece that his diamonds are real on “Emotionally Scarred”, Verse 1 on “Gang Signs”, Starlito shoutout on “Get Ugly”, the back and forth hook on “We Paid”

Vintage Review: Taylor Allderdice

Score: 4.5/5 (Hall Of Fame Mixtape) | Released: March 13th, 2012

Written By: Anthony Seaman       

     Pennsylvania’s rap credibility has been undeniable since 1985. Schoolly D released “PSK What Does It Mean?”, a cold hearted street tale that went on to directly influence Ice-T to rap a slice of life documentary on “6 In The Mornin’”, thus sparking a cross continental movement of gangster rap that still greases the genre today. PA's most notable rappers have gravel in their veins and survival on their mental at every moment, except for one guy. One little local star turned global icon named The Fresh Prince. He and Jazzy Jeff came into the rap world as goofy, fun loving picturesque totems of youth who felt like the coolest kid in your school had made it big. Whatever they wore, people wanted to cop (the Venn Diagram of people who own Aqua 8's and Grape 5's and fans of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is just a circle). The jokes they told could be stolen and flipped as your own. The corny moments existed, but if anything it made them seem more normal. This was the risk free lineage Wiz Khalifa was born to inherit. Once he hit puberty and stopped making music that sounded like a resume to get signed to Roc-A-Fella, Wiz took the mantle as the everyman stoner who rolled in bed, rolled out of bed, got too hi and crawled back into bed, just to record free spirited frat party classics in a daze while the mic teetered on his pillow.

            2011 was the breakout year. It was one of topping the charts and running around Hollywood where his unforgettably ignorant laugh was deafened by a new hoard of fans screaming his praises. This new life was his spoil to reap after years of constant vlogging, mixtapes (with at this time Kush & Orange Juice still acting as his crown jewel) and the now eternal Pittsburgh Steelers anthem and global chart topper “Black & Yellow”. Those early tapes were breezy recollections of nights before the alcohol blacked you out over beats smooth enough to not heighten your hangover. But he isn’t much different from many of his contemporaries in the sense he juggled a split identity; one side using his creativity only to be commodified and please the label, while the other is his more pure artist expression. The influx of new fans didn’t know any better, and they had bought in fully to the commodified side believing they were seeing a young man finally get his break. His die hard supporters did know better. They feared he’d become a sellout after Cabin Fever (a meddlesome excursion into “turn up” music with Lex Luger and Juicy J who were the current kings of the sound) and Rolling Papers (full of wispy thin crossover records) brought wild successes as far as downloads and albums sales were concerned. All of this was heightened by an overly caricatured version of the zooted manchild they adored and followed from “Say Yeah”, to parting ways with Warner, through soul searching on the mixtape circuit, all the way back to the majors being the face pushing such uninspiring mid. By the end of 2011 you could peep into any high school class in America to see a Wiz clone; camo cargos, Converse, oversized plain tee, a blonde patch in their hair, and a dime bag they paid $25 for calling for them after class. He was in a straight to DVD classic with Snoop Dogg that spawned a hit with Bruno Mars, dating supermodel and former Kanye muse Amber Rose, and it seemed he’d never come back home to that true self.

            Taylor Allderdice was announced in early 2012 with no single leading up to give a peek into which Wiz the world would be getting. More singing with pop stars? Another faux Waka Flocka tape? Free jazz? It was up in the air. Over a decade later the idea driving the record is clear; he was sick of hearing y’all complain. The tape is tied together thematically by an interview with hip-hop journalist Rob Markman (of The Source, Variety, Genius, etc.) where Wiz keeps his usual meditative persona, but is clearly pointed in trying to reclaim the narrative of who he was in the eyes of consumers, critics and music industry folk. His signature giggle and surfer dude diction make his statements actually reassuring. He becomes his truest spirit animal; Crush from Finding Nemo. Cool, calm, collected, and that ethereal zen rubs off on you and forces you to believe every word. Signing Juicy J to Taylor Gang didn’t delegitimize the labels Pittsburgh sound (to which production wise there still isn’t one, more in wearing the aesthetic of a sonically versatile cool guy that he, Mac Miller, Chevy Woods, and My Favorite Color carry true to), Juicy helped shape it. The major label album wasn’t him selling out, it was a lesson on how to maneuver through the industry that others can learn from. Evolution as an artist and the license to do what feels best in the moment is the core counter to every question, and the music surrounding such staunch rebuttals proves it.

            The records aren’t just blanket soundtracks to menial days anymore, they embody scenes of all of our lives. When the sun cracks through your blinds early in the morning, highlighting the heavy haze you’ve created from incense and a joint, that’s “Brainstorm”. When your confidence is at an all time high knowing every task on your to-do list is checked and you have a zip in your pocket, that’s “Mary 3x”. Walking to the corner store with your best friend puff puff passing after a few runs at the park, that’s “Nameless”. And if you’ve never smoked weed and had this kind of life, Wiz isn’t worried about your 2 cents, he’s earned millions on this style, talking to his people. There’s a suite of Juicy J records in here that takes the Cabin Fever template and injects it with fresh colors. “T.A.P.” is an all-time showing on the boards from SpaceGhostPurrp, “The Code” is a twitchy Taylor Gang cypher, “My Favorite Song” toes the line between an epiphany of where he is in life and being a strip club peak jam that could fit in between hits from T-Pain’s Epiphany. In crafting the project he doesn’t make specific one off songs to appease each sub-sect of his global fanbase, he meshes the qualities that each one loves about him into every individual creation. Song by song you can pick apart the harmonious blend of his artistry to see every phase of his career was necessary to get to this point. Cardo, Sledren, Big Jerm, and ID Labs have been his go to pack of producers for years, and by this time they all had reached points of mastery in their craft that nothing short of excellence left their hard drives. 

            Even with universal mega-hits in “See You Again” and “Work Hard, Play Hard” taking him to pop star heights, Taylor Allderdice artistically was the apex of Wiz’s career. Post-Allderdice Wiz proved a classic studio album was never in the cards, but grouping his singles into a Greatest Hits compilation would trick you into thinking he ruled the radio as much as he had the Datpiff charts. When mentioned in conversations along with his Blog Era brothers (Wale, Big Sean, Drake, Kid Cudi, Curren$y) there’s always a fond remembrance of who he once was, no matter how rough the current work has become. Becoming the poster child for marijuana usage for his generation was a long path that he was proud to walk since day 1. On “Mary 3x” he reminisces about smoking in pictures since the MySpace days and the fearful warnings his circle gave him about having weed so openly in his videos. Today he clocks in at #5 in the pantheon of famous smokers (#1 Bob Marley, #2 Snoop Dogg, #3 Willie Nelson, #4A & 4B Cheech & Chong, #5 Wiz, #6 Curren$y, #7A & 7B Method Man & Redman, #8 Jimi Hendrix, #9 Seth Rogan, #10 Burner), along with floating on as an unquestioned mixtape legend, hitmaker, and at one point the most influential artist in America, who always repped PA to the fullest since day one. 

Best Song: “Mary 3x”
Best Beat: “Brainstorm”
Best Moments: Juicy J on “Blindfolds”, the train sound on “T.A.P.”, the combination of Amber Rose doing the hook on “Never Been Pt. 2” as well as the drums cracking in to start the song, the first verse on “Brainstorm”, how perfect the sequencing across the entire tape is, realizing Kendrick lifted the whole interview within an album idea for To Pimp A Butterfly from here.

Modern Review: TEC

Score: 3/5 | Released: September 22nd, 2023

Written By: Anthony Seaman  

 We all reach a certain age where every new artist that slides into your algorithm doesn’t immediately warrant a click like it did when you were younger and had ample time to slide down Youtube rabbit holes. Lil Tecca has existed in my pop-rap peripheral, always making songs that fit into the Internet Money type-beat sphere where rappers do an amalgamtive Nav-Travi$-Peep cosplay to appeal to the rugrats who have a big red circle on their calendar to mark the next Fornite concert. The infamous Genius video of him breaking down his lyrics and just how performative they are didn’t turn me off (as a Rick Ross fan, who am I to challenge the truth of lyrics), but rather the blandness of the raps themselves. If you’re gonna lie, go all the way out there with it. 6 years and 3 projects since “Ransom” sent him from creating music in his family home in Queens into the rap zeitgeist, the rapper-producer-label owner has finally hit drinking age, and is ready to shed the Kidz Bop Speaker Knockerz allegations for good. What may seem trivial is for the first time is him having an album cover featuring his in the flesh image instead of scenic dreamworlds where a shadowy outline with gleaming glasses acts as his avatar. In a recreated childhood bedroom you see his glory with your own eyes; platinum plaques for his We Love You Tecca series, images of him with family and cars, another plaque commemorating his Youtube success. From day one he was a hitmaker, and there's a hunger to prove that he's more than just empty stats.

Lyrically he still lives as a side character in a PG-13 coming of age comedy, spending his time parsing between heartbreak, partying, being crossed by friends and pulling women by the bunches, but the specifics of it all are starting to leak in. Less rapping in headlines of his days, and more reporting from his real POV. On “Used2Dis” he speaks on how his fame is affecting a romantic partnership, a step up from there just being issues with little reason as to why. A diversity in his flows and cadences has finally sprung as well, breaking out of the straight and steady read long flow he’s leaned on for so long, now swaying out just a tad. It’s the difference between quantizing your drums, and shaking them all slightly back by hand; a humanity is added ever so slightly to remind you real blood was pumped to make this art. The computerized projection of his natural nasal tone shines through on every hook, each one more addicting than the last. Where the project's craftsmanship comes into play is in its structure; sugar rush pop friendly hooks, slick transitions between songs, and mutating beats that never run stale. “HVN ON EARTH” and the BNYX sung hook/sample may end up being the best single record in his entire catalog, with a moderately focused Kodak verse tagged on to loop some chaos into something so strikingly sleek. Which is also the formula that makes the Life Of Pi’erre series so paramount, but everything has been compacted into a Tamagochi sized unit.

        All but two of the TEC songs cross the 3 minute mark (a lengthy 3:08 and 3:10 for each joints), and the album as a whole can be zoomed through in less than 40 minutes, compared to Bourne’s hour long trips through the catacombs of his life changing beats and torturously awful bars. More traditional trap leaning than an Eem Tripplin album but more melodically fluid than anything Nav has done, all while still invoking the playful jam sessions that come from being a bedroom superstar. It’s music to ride around solo doing errands to, a backdrop to spruce up folding Shein cargo pants, headnod music for washing the dishes. When shuffling through shelves of headlight bulbs in an AutoZone over the weekend, “500lbs” came on over the stores radio, a refreshing burst in between the DJ’s shuffle of “Turn Yo Clique Up” and “Rich Flex”. This is what Tecca is all about. Enough of a youthful jolt to the system to force you to Shazam it inside a chain store, but bleached out enough to still exist in those spaces. He can act as a gateway between the ears of casual rap fans and the gleaming blares of plugg/rage singers from the newest Soundcloud wave. He’s worked with helping propel the careers of Mr. Up Next himself SoFaygo, Babysantana, and Yung Fazo, each hyper focused youths looking to jolt an audience that still has to ask permission to hang out with their friends on weekends. For the future of everyone involved Tecca becoming more personal in his verse writing while welcoming in some of the aforementioned fresh voices to spruce up his next album could be the exact growth that can bring him from Prince of The Teens (Yachty still very much at least co-holds the King crown) into a respected pop rap heavy hitter.

Best Song: "Trippin’ On U"
Best Beat: "HVN ON EARTH"
Best Moments: The “HVN ON EARTH” hook, the “Racks” interpolation on “Salty”, the transition from “Real Discussions” into “Dead Or Alive”, the afrobeat switch up that is “Either Way”

Top 5 Alive 2023

Written By: Anthony Seaman

         The concept of being Top 5 Dead Or Alive has been around in rap since before anyone ever took the time to write it down as a hard list. Jadakiss claims ownership of the phrase, and it’s Jadakiss so why bother arguing even if he’s definitely not the actual first. This phrase has been the spark to hundreds of heated debates, where names of cemented first ballot Hall Of Famers are conjured (the classic 5 being Biggie, Pac, Jay, Nas, Rakim) rappers who defined culture in ways we tend to forget due to their omnipresence (Kanye, Drake, Wayne, Eminem, Snoop) regional Gods (Scarface, Ice Cube, Common, Busta Rhymes, Skepta) alien level wordsmiths (Lupe Fiasco, Andre 3000, Black Thought, Ghostface, Noname), underground forefathers (MF DOOM, Roc Marciano, Kool G Rap, Kool Keith, Aceyalone), innovators who turned their backs to the music industry or passed too soon (Big L, Big Pun, Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, Nipsey Hussle) once in a lifetime characters (Pimp C, ODB, E-40, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes), and new generation legends (J. Cole, Kendrick, Future, Nicki, Young Thug). There’s never any trophies given out to whoever is considered the Best Rapper Alive every year the way sports send Most Valuable Player awards to their brightest stars. This is an attempt to correct that. In art there are no winners and losers, but rap has toed the line between competitive sport and art more than any other format. The quest to out-wit and best an opponent goes back to the days of kids on street corners playing the dozens or breakdancing in front of crowds for approval. Hip-Hop at its core is about sharing the perspective of the auertor and DJ in unison while a crowd parties or nods on, and every calendar year 5 artists stick out as the most essential MC’s who complete that task. Some years there’s only 2 or 3 standouts, some years you can choose between 10 people. The core of this award comes to these categories;

Quality Of Rapping

• Are you expanding the playbook with flow, presence, lyricism, content, songwriting?

• Are you better than your peers?

• How often do we as listeners sit back in amazement, laughter, or appreciation at the level of rapping we’re listening to?

Quality Musical Output

• How good was the album / features / singles you officially released this year?

• Did you put out multiple quality projects or was it a mixed bag?

• Are we constantly going back to enjoy the work you created even months later?

Impact On The Genre

• What is the conversation within your sphere centered around, and how much of it is you as an artist?

• Did you break out of your sub-genres sphere into the greater zeitgeist or into multiple other realms?

• Are you equally or more popular than you were last year?

• When we look back at this year, who are the people that will stand out?

        Sales never come into play, what the MetaCritic average is for your last project is irrelevant. When you leave your house, check your timeline, kick it with friends, open YouTube, who do you want to hear? Who can you not avoid? Who is everyone trying to sound like? Who is everyone trying to be better than? Who is living up to their own shadow? Who will we look back on in 10 years and think about most? Being underground or mainstream is a minor note, but rather what waves did you cause in your scene? How does it compare to the other scenes within this sprawling ecosystem of hip-hop? There’s no pre-set requirements for the Top 5 like we’re the college football bowl games, it can be all underground, all international, all mainstream, all west coast, all auto-tune, all middle aged; but whoever is selected are the best of the best. Each of these artists has created masterful work, outshined their peers, become representatives of a time or a scene that they are champions of, or are just so omnipresent and openly praised in the hip-hop world that they can't be denied.

Veeze

Midwest (Detroit, MI)

First Top 5 Alive - 1st Midwest All-Star

Best Verses: “Not A Drill” Verse 2 - “GOMD” - “ATL Freestyle Pt. 1 & Pt. 2”

He’s the king of quotables, an elite beat selector, performs gripping hooks and punchline filled verses with a mumbled drawl, and even as a low energy performer he has the charm every slacker character in entertainment has ever had. Ganger (Deluxe) is a 26 song odyssey into classic tropes; groupie love, drugs, quality clothing and hi-fi descriptions of how much cooler he is than you. Every thought flows without a filter, shouting out legends of generations past, NBA role players, and his constant oscillation between cocky king and anxious. The balance between room rattling bangers and hyper intuitive bar crafting hasn’t been pulled off this seamlessly since The Notorious B.I.G. was huffing and puffing in and out of limos. Michigan street rap has bubbled to nuclear levels over the last 2 years. Pouring together scam rap and West Coast indebted drug dealer tales has turned Flint and Detroit into epicenters of style within the hip-hop industry. 42 Dugg, Babyface Ray, Icewater Vezzo, Sada Baby, Babytron and Tee Grizzley have become pillars, influencing or making fans out of the biggest mainstream stars (Yachty, Lil Baby, Future). Few have peaked public interest more than Veeze who's as funny off record as he is when the mic is live. He'll roast fits on Twitter, disassociate in a photoshoot, and keep the childlike goofiness that is typically buried away with layers of stuffy bravado.

Building upon an endless amount of Soundcloud loosies and features have set the bedrock for Veeze to build his own messy technicolor mansion atop. “Not A Drill”, “GAIG”, “Get Lucki”, “GOMD” and “Sexy Liar” all stack up next to whoever your favorite analog obsessed underground acts may be, while the hooks and beats outlast any mainstream contemporaries attempts to be innovative. Song structure is secondary, allowing his consciousness to be free over ethereal keys and time flattening percussion. Some songs are bookended with refrains, some are endless poems detailing life as someone who still can’t believe they’re famous. Ganger is curated as whole much like it's individual parts. It's a sprawling hard drive dump from the hundreds of hours spent in studios across the country the last 4 years that would sound more unfocused if the music slipped enough upon listening for you to care. A majority of the beatmakers are local stars or relatively unknown names (MitchGoneMad, Rocaine, Tye Beatz, Pat Swish) imprinting their names to the game outside of one major placement from Pooh Beatz (“What’s Poppin?” / “Suge”). Without super producers and allowing modern styles like NY Drill and Jersey Club to inject themselves in, it allows Veeze to expand from within. Bit by bit deepening the playbook of what Detroit rap can sound like. He’s created the kind of catalog that can only be successful today; so distinctly in conversation with the mainstream trends but proudly adverse to hooks and traditional “singles”. Like an episode of Seinfeld you lose focus for 2 minutes and you fine yourself in a whole new world scrambling to connect how we got here, most of the time with no reason to be found. Fresh life has overgrown from Detroit into the rap zeitgeist, with Veeze as the newest and brightest bud within the knotted vines.

Billy Woods

East Coast (New York City, NY)

3rd Top 5 Alive ('19, '22) - 9th East All-Star

Best Verses: “Soundcheck" Verse 1 - "Facetime" Verse 2 - "Living Curfew"

    At any given moment Billy Woods is going to rap at a higher level than any working rapper. Maps is the 2nd installment into his full length collabs with underground wizard Kenny Segal, and a Travel Channel ready anthology about the pro’s, cons and oddities of tour life and intercontinental travel in a post-pandemic world. We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, the newest release from his Armand Hammer outfit with Elucid harkens back to the swirling familial world building of Aquemini, but one that has Fantastic Damage and Vaudville Villian as North Stars instead of Parliament Funkadelic and A Tribe Called Quest. While most of the underground follows suit with the Griselda indebted neo-boom bap sound that is easy to replicate (one MAYBE two verses per song with no hook about clothes, drugs and “being the realest” and a simple drum break and loop combo) Woods has pushed the envelope far the other way. Anything Segal, JPEGMAFIA, August Fanon, El-P, DJ Haram provide (along with a sea of other collaborators) are from the farthest corners of their hard drives. Awkward time signatures, living sounds never looping, instruments from across the globe; nothing is off limits. His voice is brooding, and nearly every verse is a verbalization of impending doom from the perspective of someone who’s too aware to ignore what seems inevitable. Retiring from rap and becoming a writer of theological essays or Kafka style novels wouldn't surprise anyone, as his pen game stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best in modern times. Even the comedic moments that slide in sound fit for a gallows stand up set rather than conversational wise cracks. Layering in singers or echoing war chants provides a depth that the gritty brutality the other side of the East Coast spectrum rarely provides. 

            Give him ethereal mood music, it becomes the canvas to appreciate disastrous smells and ethnic foods (“Agriculture”). Pass along glitching sci-fi scores, you’ll receive new couplets to live life by and poetic recollections of Larry David like situations (“Woke Up And Asked Siri How I’m Gonna Die”). Sloppy late night jazz renditions lead to musings of a New York native's melancholy about the world that molded him changing before his eyes (“NYC Tapwater”). Aesop Rock, Noname, $ilkmoney, Danny Brown, Curly Castro, Earl Sweatshirt; take your pick. They’ve all paled next to Woods. Elucid is his only match on record, but with his own southpaw style anyone at any moment can be duped next to Elucid. To top it all off Woods’ Backwoodz Studioz imprint has also had an explosion of releases from Fatboi Sharif, Blockhead and Fielded, creating a ground zero for some of the most inventive hip-hop and rap adjacent music in America. Raising popularity, praise from his peers, quality albums, and a shock factor to every verse that leads one down a YouTube rabbit hole on African history or a visual essays about what happened to sour diesel weed have allowed Woods to become a star in today’s online inhabiting hip-hop, and an all time legend in the process. 

Danny Brown

Midwest (Detroit, MI)

2nd Top 5 Alive ('11) - 10th Midwest All-Star

Best Verses: “Ground Zero" - "Down Wit It" Verse 1 - "Orange Juice Jones" Verse 1

    After 15 years of being a professional rapper Danny Brown has pushed, destroyed and rebuilt expectations of what hip-hop should sound like 10 times over. He's been an underground institution, a proud representative of Detroit's rich musical history, and an artist constantly looking to find new highs in every sonic basin he can screech into. For years XXXX, a follow up to the breakthrough album XXX, had been teased as the next installment to the Danny Brown discography. Instead Scaring The Hoes and Quaranta keep the same format of his famed breakout, just in 2 different bodies. XXX showed the duality of Danny; one side of the album dedicated to the obnoxious drug fueled Tazmania devil zooming within, while the other was a grown ass man who is thoughtful and well aware of the struggles he and his cohorts survived. Scaring The Hoes found the chaotic half of himself diving full steam into the glitchy chasms of experimental genre fluid rap he helped create with Old and Atrocity Exhibition, but has excavated to new depths thanks to collaborator and unabashed fan JPEGMAFIA. The duo released Scaring The Hoes and an accompanying DLC Pack that saw JPEG's production at it's most ambitious, bringing the motor mouthed Danny into a zone he hadn't sniffed in nearly a decade. Diving back and forth with JPEG for 2 projects reminds us just how nimble Danny can be. Whether it's over blown out industrial drums or over-compressed R&B samples he's at home throwing his feet on the coffee table. The absurdity of his lyrics remains intact behind muffled vocal mixing making his already signature register a new instrument all together.

  On the flipside Quaranta is his most somber album. Kassa Overall, Quelle Chris, Skywlkr, and Kaelin Ellis headline the production team that strips back all the psychedelia JPEGMAFIA bathed him in. The beats at times only feature drums and some light ambiance letting the dark side of his accidental exile from rap pour out. Reignited struggles with addiction, the pandemic and a budding podcast had kept Brown busy since the 2019's uknowhatimsayin'?, but now sober he takes the time to recognize his slip ups and what he's learned along the way. He's loved, lost, looked inward, and for the first time seems so sick of what he's done that he might finally have reached a turning point. The album cover shows everything this album represents; the barren headshot of a man who has over his whole career used cartoons or heavily edited photographs as covers to create a Dionysian monster that sparsely showed any humanity. Thematically the shame and regret from his partying have always snuck into songs, but now there's nothing to hide them behind. Returning from solitude as just a guy who's been through the wringer rather than a pill popping sleep paralysis demon gives him the opportunity to master a new chamber. At 42 years old he's the head of Bruiser Brigade (ZelooperZ, Bruiser Wolf, J.U.S., Fat Ray, and Chip$), a label that he's carried the freak flag for for over a decade that in the last few years has created critical darlings who are just beginning to go farther than Danny ever could. The Danny Brown Show podcast exists at the nexus of stand up comedy, rap, and deep Internet culture and is a riot that platforms his sparkling charisma. At this point in his career he's rapping with friends, expanding a legacy that is already lauded in the eyes of fans, and is an unquestioned Hall Of Fame rapper. Now he's well becoming a well rounded entertainer and person, for what seems like the first time.

MIKE

East Coast (New York City, NY)

First Top 5 - 4th East Coast All-Star

Best Verses: “Sentry” - "Snake Charm" - "Thug Anthem"

           This one is a long time coming. MIKE has been the torch bearer for New York's haziest deconstructions of what rap music can be for nearly a decade and it all came to a head this year. Beware Of The Monkey was released late December of 2022 and was the bgeninnig of a 12 month tear featuring his solo album Burning Desire, a collaborative tape with Wiki and The Alchemist titled Faith Is A Rock, and an instrumental tape under his DJ Blackpower pseudonym Dr. Grabba. As an artist he's always toyed with analog fuzz, the static of old TV's and the disjointed chops of distorted samples creating new universes on each track. Reflecting the brain fog birthed of trauma and the coping mechanisms to tamper down said trauma was his specialty. After each release you were always left rooting for MIKE to find peace through his sorrows, and while the pitfalls always show up he's jumping over them with glee for the first time. He weak spot was always as a writer, with his nostalgia laden production and freefrom pockets doing the heavy lifting to keep one interested. Maturity and expansion into working with more battle tested rappers has forced growth in his writing to which he's not only competent but straight up witty in his wordplay. On "Bless" with 10k cohort Sideshow, MIKE dishes quick and tight body blows about self improvement, while on another Alchemist produced track, "Sentry",  he produces existential questions and loose thoughts in a speedy flow that perfectly counters Earl's slurred musings.
                 Only through a full body of work does MIKE truly spread his wings. Burning Desire (which may be his best album to date), is meant to quell short attention spans with 2 dozen short songs bursting at the edges with everything from the blown out tension of "African Sex Freak Fantasy", the speedy horn ensemble "98", and the sensual bounce of "Set The Mood". Don't look to closely into the labeled "concept" of the album (billed as a dark romantic horror) but rather lay out and enjoy the journey through the most accessible album in a catalog of challenging futuristic hip-hop. Stripped back from the ambition of Burning Desire is Faith Is A Rock, a one-v-one barfest with fellow Yankee representative Wiki. The duo have pefected thier chemistry over the years and leave space for the other to act as a yin to the others yang. Wiki is a more traditional lyricist, but MIKE takes every opportunity to one up or draw even with someone I previously saw as tiers above him as a spitter. This entire year could be a fluke where verses like "Real Hip Hop" and "Thug Anthem" live in a vacuum, letting MIKE return to being a discombobulated mumbler through the malaise. But more likely than not we're watching in real time someone grow into their final form, not just as a musician but a man ruling indie rap. In this time period the label he heads, 10k Global, also saw 16 new releases hit the world from himself, Sideshow, Jadasea, DJ Paradise, and Niontay among others with everyone gaining steam in their own careers. As his cohort pursue greatness in their own form, MIKE watches his popularity grow by proxy. Burning Desire saw his first entry into a chart of any kind peaking his head into the Apple Music charts upon its release. How the world accepts his art is something only time can tell, but at the trajectory he's going he'll be accepted and praised with open arms.

RXK Nephew

East Coast (Rochester, NY)

First Top 5 - 2nd East Coast All-Star

Best Verses: “Long Song" - "Yeezy Boots" - "Minute Made" Verse 1

            In 50 years when i’m a grandfather, when this website has been bought out by a BlackRock company or TikTok, and we all have to wear heat retardant suits to go outside and check the mail, I’m probably not going to have my grandbaby sitting on my knee telling him about much because I already have the memory of a goldfish at 26 years old. But deep down in the recesses of my brain will be the memory of me cry laughing in the middle of the night listening to “American Tterroristt” for the first time. 3 years ago when it came out RXK Nephew was still in my mind the Robin to RX Papi’s Batman, an idea that today could not be farther from the truth. From then to now everything that made “American Tterroristt” one of the single funniest and most exciting rap performances of the decade has been smoothed out into clear form. The unpredictable punchlines of a young Wayne, the extremely online nonsensical explorations of Lil B, the trap lord ruthlessness of Gucci Mane, the targeted battle rap mindset of Papoose and Joe Budden; it’s all there and entering new levels release by release. The last 12 months has seen 9 albums hit streamers, each one distinct from the other capturing boom bap, electro-fusion, traditional trap, whatever you consider the funky nostalgia of Harry Fraud, and plugg music to name a few.

The way his bars are crafted sound like scribblings of a madman. He can hyper analyze any situation down to the aglets on a pedestrian's shoes, or come up with jabs that seem fit for a middle school lunch table. The drunken piling onto a single target could go on for a couplet, or could go on for 5 minutes straight without a breath. You never know exactly what version of Neph you’re going to get day to day and in that he’s the perfect living totem for what 2023 rap has been. In a post-Drake world everyone can do every kind of sub-genre. You either become a chameleone to the world around you or you burrow deeper into yourself to create an irreplicable sound that white kids with a cracked FL Studio program in Europe will remaster in a way you couldn’t have imagined in 18 months tops. Somehow Neph has done both, a distinct punch in Pablo Juan-ish delivery that ranges from silky sweet talker to manic Mr. Hyde that can find a home in any beat. Love songs, drug abusing songs, party songs, serving family songs, fuck Kanye songs. Whatever the newest album is is a safe entry point into his catalog because no matter what the next 2 tapes to drop will make you think it’s a whole new man. Sometimes with these “best rapper” convos we look purly at bars (of which Neph has when he’s in the mood) but we’ll overlook how much fun someone is to listen to, how exciting and invigorating their style is. Carrying the Real RX torch from Papi as he dips in and out of jail forced Nephew to be a monster. The furvor in making music at such a high creative clip doesn’t even feel like something he’s in control of; a year like this only comes from an unfathomable ether. You can never harness it, but just lean into it when you’ve been chosen by it. If there’s anything Nephew has perfected this calendar year it’s letting loose and we’re all to be thankful for that.