Image via Haviah Mighty/Instagram
Steven Louis is so inclined.
“Coke With Ice” is the hard rap equivalent of an ever-circulating sports social media prompt — the moment you went against a future pro and instantly knew you’d have to do something else for a living. It’s that Derrick Henry high school game where he rushed for like 400 yards. CRIMEAPPLE delivers “you probably wasn’t made for this” in service of a narrow rhyme scheme, but it hits as the logline for his latest drop with Apollo Brown. Cratedigger Revivalism, which is what I’ll call the past decade or so of Ka, Roc Marciano, Griselda and so on, has been galvanizing for underground rap culture, but it’s also produced a lot of B+ rappers barring out over similar minor key jazz loops. CRIMEAPPLE, New York by New Jersey by Colombia, is the professional here. He differentiates himself with a flavorful bilingual flow and a precise jab-step that veers into the surreal. Perhaps he’s imbued with the spirits of two late greats in Chino XL and MF Doom. Maybe he stamps the work with a Darryl Strawberry 18. He definitely elevates his stuff behind Apollo Brown, the way a dominant center makes everything easier on the perimeter. Born in Grand Rapids and working in Dillatroit, Brown is the sonic knot between Phat Kat and Danny Brown. This beat is top-shelf whisky. The bass is on some Maltese Falcon shit. “Coke With Ice” burns through the plastic and doubles the asking price.
ATM Danny is 818 like a Raiders decal on a Dodge Ram, crinkling in triple-digit heat. He’s 818 like raspados on the sidewalk, or a donut in a fluorescent pink box, or a blunt in the parking lot of the Northridge Mall. He has an air coolant flow and a lightly-dusted twang, and he finds a producer to match his sangfroid with Los Angeles’ Gotdamnitdupri. This beat hits like an electric massage chair. It rattles and relaxes. Dupri deserves to be on every short list for best producers on the West.
“Spend It” gives Danny a clean pocket to unfurl smoke and sauté the spinach. He has conversations with the faces on his bills, and delivers with a grinning sedation that’s hard to not bop along with. Music to spill expensive drink on your shirt to; three-wheel motion down Ventura Boulevard.
From 818 to “888,” 2219 Lee and Vontee The Singer emulate the most crowded banger of a party you’ve ever been to. “It’s dumb packed in here,” they warn you at the door. They’ve carried the hookah out with them. Someone got a parking ticket; the Jersey City Division of Parking is decidedly not slizzy. This is a late summer banger because of its crowdedness, not in spite of it. Verses are butter but also kinda irrelevant, since they’re used as percussive instruments. Are you going to tell me that Off the Wall doesn’t sound awesome under the influence of bodega metabolism pills?
I think I trust DaBoii with any sample beat imaginable. Give the Vallejo rapper the “I take once daily Jardiance” pharmaceutical commercial and he’d skate off with a regional superhit. DaBoii’s propulsive flow and raised delivery are tailored for North California beatwork, and it’s singles like “Blindfold” that stamp his decision to go solo — his presence on the record is massive and relentless. He exemplifies one of my favorite types of rappers — folks who dexterously bend syllables and shift gravity uptempo but make it sound super casual, almost effortless. It’s what I love about DaBoii’s music, and the same goes for EBK Jaaybo, Ralfy the Plug and 1100 Himself. California leads the world in dopeness to sweat broken quotient.
Let’s put Ontario’s Haviah Mighty into the “music video of the year” conversation. Shot in black & white by Nate Borland and produced by Thabo, Amir Jamm and Adrian Bellaire, “Double The Fun” exhausts like a wire-to-wire action movie. The high-intensity strobe lights and blunt abstractions belie the control that Haviah raps with. Rhyming “feng shui” and “blood bank” is very dope. Her music plays against expectations without predictability, and channels bubbling frustration without a shout. The shadows dance, do pushups and take your queen off the chessboard. Don’t worry about what’s in the kid’s briefcase; Tarantino does not have bars like that.
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