Locksmith - Sanity

Locksmith is a wicked talented motherfucker. This means he's also one of those rappers whose career is living proof This Rap Shit Ain't a Talent Show. This cat did everything possible to blow up and he's stuck on the same awkward plateau as anyone else in 2017, watching the Interscope Machine strip-mine our entire damn generation. A whole lot of talent competing for the same fanbase these days.

"Blowing Up" is perhaps not even an attainable goal at this point. The era of Rap Stars was mostly an artifact of high school kids with lots of disposable income and very little internet access. That shit is gone for good. So Locksmith grinds, banging out the same death march of radio appearances, podcasts, features, and social media nothings. This is his fourth video now off his latest album. Winning the war for attention spans forces you to balance quality control with the sheer quantity the Spectacle demands.

J Million's work as a director is very Content Producer on LinkedIn. This ain't cinema & it doesn't have to be: this is getting shared on Facebook, not aired on MTV. Everything looks good until Mr. Million starts really turning the lights on, then the framing & design gets kinda "Full Sail graduate," you feel me? You do.

But so what? Locksmith is the whole show, all the cuts are just there to keep the iTards engaged enough to watch. The visual language of a hip hop video has improved a lot since the 90's, but they're also more constrained than ever. Somewhere between Gnarls Barkley going global and Future dropping Dirty Sprite 2, ink suspension effects have become as mandatory as slow-motion smoke shots or, you know, women on camera.

Or, you know, hooks. Rappers do hooks because we think we have to. "Sanity" is a perfect example. Thirty seconds of dude chanting "I Got This Feeling" is beautiful cynicism, a stripped-down joke about the state of arena-rap like G-Eazy or Drake. The fact it is absolutely not intended that way only makes it funnier. Hits evoke feelings, usually some consumer striver aspiration-rap, which is cheap, sad horseshit. "Sanity" is something different.

Specifically, it's a mixed-race emcee busting bars about the burden of being half-black, half-Iranian. Not a lot of product placement opportunities here, but then again, Pepsi is getting edgy in 2017 and Social Justice is in. As long as he doesn't go full Lowkey and start making actual diss tracks to Israel, he's got a bright future.

The second verse re-frames the hood jeremiad as a movie about the conflicts of being a black cop and it's classic Locksmith - technically dazzling performance, emotionally charged writing. That whole Grind Time movement set high standards but it also homogenized a semi-international scene. There's always been a huge diversity of styles, but ultimately the audience doesn't change much: a room full of young men who need pop culture references and careful hand gestures to walk them through punchlines & flow patterns. Fuckwits, in other words.

So there's a lot of technically dazzling indie rappers at war for your beautiful eyeballs. Locksmith is unimpeachably real, but that same authenticity limits his horizons. Defending the culture, keeping lyricism alive, honoring your elders: all that shit only sounds good on paper. Hip hop is a death cult with breakdancers. Purists are janitors in a mausoleum.

This video was pretty aight.