Russ - "Got This"

Russ is a talented motherfucker, any conversation about him should start there. Self-produced, prolific, consistent, and he's cynical enough to not only see the next wave coming, but do it as well as any artist he imitates.

Based on his last album, yeah, that would probably be Drake. That's pretty impressive considering Russ, unlike Aubrey, is too proud to buy bars from better writers. The work ethic behind a project like There's Really a Wolf is undeniable, sheer electric charge.

Russ deserves his success, he deserves to eat the heart from G-Eazy's shattered corpse. He is an apex specimen of arena rap, better than most of his influences. Yet he's only better at being them... you know?

It's intended as big baller showoff, but this video speaks to why suicide rates are so high & heroin is back. Like, directly. Russ is a talented motherfucker, yet how he applies that reveals the howling void eating the heart out of America.

Conspicuous consumption is a subsidized industry. Only rubes are really out here stunting like that at their own expense, and it's admirable to blow a video budget partying with your friends. It's just amazing you're all braindead enough to do that throwing money around in a private jet drinking champagne; that is 1994 shit.

You could have been blowing up vintage cars with vintage tanks in the desert surrounded by strippers with flamethrowers. Grow the fuck up.

This isn't even hate so much as heartbreak. The one thing that Russ always made clear, from early email list days to actual tours, is the fact he takes himself seriously as an artist. He means well and he has so much to give. But like all of us, he grew up in the ruins of a strip mall porno factory, practicing gestures he learned on television, aspiring to act rich.

He's not wrong for imprinting on this kind of suicidal bullshit. This really is the best America had to offer him.

Perfectly executed and still perfectly empty. There are car dealerships in Michigan who produce better advertisements than this. It's competent and slick enough, but the editing and direction here is pure Taco Bell.

As Billboard ran it: "I’m really questioning if I want to do any more interviews because people always f------ twist my words and they end up pushing the wrong narrative and people end up taking my s--- wrong," which is poetry. Cool story, bro. Burn in hell.