Yo Gotti - "Dogg"

Yo Gotti is blessed with a perfect rap voice and a couple natural cadences that always work. He also had the rare wisdom to stop calling himself "Lil Yo." He also dropped two albums last year. One was a mixtape, but if I can buy your fucking mixtape as a physical fucking compact disc at Best Buy, Target, and various high-end gas stations, that's a fucking album. Fuck.

Anyways, I'm saying he's good.

The relentless demands of the content cycle scrambles everyone's catalog, here in the awesome liberated future The Internet gave us. If only rappers had been around in the cocaine glory days of the 1970's, when "recording artists" only had to release a dozen good songs a year. Few of them even managed to do that much, sure, but just enjoy the visual.

Imagine you didn't need to drop an EP to raise awareness about the mixtape you dropped to raise awareness about your album. Imagine you didn't need to produce at least five videos, every year, that cost you thousands and earn you pennies, just to raise awareness about...so anyway, Yo Gotti.

He's got this 2 Chainz, Tupac, Z-Ro, Curren$y style effortless mastery type shit going on. Wu-Wei, the Orientals called it -- I learned that at Harvard. He's not the best rapper, but he is his best self. That counts for more than most rappers could admit.

So it's entertaining no matter how corny or simple it gets, and it gets very shitty indeed.

The video is high-gloss but awkwardly, beautifully back-yard. Perhaps Yo Gotti's most impressive achievement here is making footage of dogs and Suicide Girl leftovers seem weird and idiosyncratic. This is a very based, rare space that A$AP Ferg occupies with more gravity but less grace, over on the East Coast.

And nobody in Yo Gotti's orbit gives any fucks about an East Coast. It's hard to believe even he believes most of the shit he talks, but that just adds to the surrealism. And the appeal. Rap ain't shit but positive thinking, prosperity gospel made flesh. Fake it until you make it or whatever.

Imagine you didn't have to, though. Imagine your best self.