LNDN DRGS - "Heathrow Bound"

 

Los Angeles is a weird fucking country. When Roman Polanski was making Chinatown, he spent his weekends filming orgies at his house, entertaining a steady stream of seekers, dreamers, dealers, fixers, hustlers & pimps. Worst of all, of course, were the actors, directors & producers he called friends. Decades later, things have only gotten worse: you'd be lucky to survive the orgies they have now. LA has always been a place for monsters to make it big, a place where anyone willing to get with the program can get ahead fast.

That program, of course, is organized crime. Mob money, sex trafficking, family dynasties and drug distribution do not exist "beneath" the glitz and glamour out in the California sun. There is no fig leaf, no pretext of legitimate governance, none of that Wall Street Judeo-Christian bullshit about respectable families or good politicians. The grim, meat-hook realities are all on billboard display over Sunset Boulevard.

Like most LA residents, Jay Worthy is a work of fiction in progress. Nothing has changed much since he was bullshitting Jeff Weiss back in 2019. This is a self-made man with Compton clout, no specifics needed: "You gotta do your history, but when you do, you learn that I’m official and not to be played with." After all, who gives a fuck? This is the entertainment business, a house of cards built on frauds co-signing frauds. Oh, and laundering money.

Critiquing Lil' Jeffrey Sidhoo as if the dude was some kind of rich poseur is missing the point. How do you think all those wealthy families got rich? It's not all patents & mineral rights up in the small circles of that Top One Percent. Further, even if ol' boy came from the most blue-blooded of velvet loafers & crisp khakis, that's got nothing to do with what happens in LA any given weekend. Rich men from good families get into trouble with drugs and guns all the time. Just ask Hunter Biden.

If you want rock-solid G-Funk rap product on demand, ask Jay Worthy. Rap losers bitch about his success being "bought" -- like a consistent, quality catalog is some shit you can just buy. The rich know better! Worthy's main asset has always been his taste. It's definitely not his rhymes; few emcees out today sound as bored with their own shit. Christ, he makes Larry June sound like Lil Fame. But his devotion to Los Angeles street music is the foundation of his success. Every connection, every album, is downstream of his informed love for the genre. To me, that's hard to hate.

It's also hard to like when it's this fucking lazy. Production bumps, sure, but it damn well better. This is just an under-cooked verse with an extended outro and a whole lot of gorgeous high-end vehicles. This video looks great and means nothing. It doesn't matter whether or not Jay Worthy is authentic, what matters is that he is boring. One Dickie.