Nyck @ Knight - "Off The Wall"

Pro Era is a Brooklyn crew with some talented folks. They're a close parallel to the Save Money posse I was slandering just yesterday. They're led by Joey Bada$$, who has two heavy, impressive LPs under his belt though some Sony vanity imprint. He's been on late night talk shows and done well for himself. Just like Chance from Chicago, lots of women you know have heard of him; more than you think.

They've also got rapper/producer Kirk Knight, who has been building a damn solid catalog on both fronts. He's on the beats here, with his signature blend of stadium pop arrangements and deep cut boom-bap. Pro Era has a deep bench. They're also super woke on the race question -- this was their actual logo until Lyor Cohen intervened:

Signs of the times, innit? What with all Kanye's Confederate merch, you'd swear we were slouching towards Post-Racial America. Or something.

No matter what city or cornball decade you're from, though, all crews get ravaged by that mighty sculptor, time. The Pareto Principle is a cold, merciless bitch. Applied to you and your homies, that means most of you won't make it -- most of you won't even amount to footnotes.

This is a cool video, in other words.

Jack Begert & crew deliver a sweetly calibrated 80's-ass VHS-gloss After Effects buffet. I talk abundant shit, but this is dope. Somewhere between Kung Fury and lo-fi Adult Swim promos, and always entertaining. Sure, having your lead performer hop off an actual wall on camera dozens of times might be an obvious treatment, yes. But there's enough ideas here to keep it moving.

Nyck Caution is an earnest NYC cat on the same Russell Jackson / Curtis Simmons trip as anyone else from Gotham. Or at least, anyone else like him: that's a diverse city, but there are roughly thirty thousand other Nyck Cautions there right now.

Kirk Knight is a whole other animal; he's doing the hook, the beats and then he steals the show on that third verse. This is someone with a long career ahead of them, a careful student of the game.

Overall, pure money product. Three Dickies, which is perhaps unfair -- this may deserve four. These mogs will survive either way.