Dot Com Dreamin'

 

As dumb plans come to fruition, we are moving this circus to a proper dot com website. As the free money era of shit corporate music journalism comes to a blood-soaked, entertaining end, it's time to step things up out here in the wilderness.

G Perico - "Troll Patrol"

 

 

 

I first heard G Perico come up in a conversation about Action Bronson. Years later, I still say they're both innocent: Bam Bam didn't bite Ghostface any more than G Perico is doing an Eazy-E impression. Both comparisons are inevitable, I get it, but I'm not signing any petitions to kick them out of the Official Real Hip Hop Academy, now or ever. Hardly anyone is here because they were invited; some clubs you have to break into. Especially if you're an Adidas-Albanian.

Unlike a majority of our modern drug rap celebrities, G Perico is exactly the retired Crip he makes himself out to be. More importantly, he's a businessman with a reliable product. His spin on G-Funk is always dope, unpredictably weird, and extremely funny. In the tradition of Suga Free, who could fuck up a grown man's life with a single bar, Perico's beefs & brags are hyper-detailed, technicolor 4K cinema. Most of the people I have hipped to his catalog didn't like him at first, the same reaction I so often see for Bruiser Wolf, Boldy James or RXKNephew. True greatness is often a system shock.

Of course, that same consistency also means that every track washes by like the one before it, right? The formula can only be so compelling, but between the charisma & the humor, "Troll Patrol" is exemplary craftsmanship. All rappers talk shit but too few of us can do it effectively. G Perico may not be internationally ranked yet, but he is a Grandmaster just the same. "If I gotta wear a rubber, I don't want it. I'm exclusive." Turn the music down and focus your ears out West to Mission Hills, and you can almost hear Jerry Heller trying to claw his way out of Eden Memorial so he can sign this kid to Ruthless.

I admire the animal purity of artists who can nail a single formula and stick to it for their entire career. At no point in the legendary saga of Ill Bill did that dude contemplate re-inventing himself. Feral genius like that doesn't need to evolve or grow in any meaningful sense, it only needs to exist like a Platonic ideal. That's the "effortless" part of mastery; the rest of us have to keep hitting the gym. Even then, maybe leave all that David Bowie shit to the pop stars & rock whores. Focus on perfecting yourself as you are.

No clue why the fuck this man is flossing in a Bruins jersey, but I do respect it. 

 

"Billion dollar brain, hundred thousand dollar chain." Lyrical-ass Official Real Hip Hop Academy rappers cringe at bars like this, but that's because they love their word games more than they love this genre. G Perico loves this genre, he loves being a rapper, and he loves living his life. It's a beautiful thing to see. Four Dickies.

 

 

Copywrite - "Turn the Page" ft. Slug

Whenever Copywrite pops back up, it's always interesting. Pete Nelson has been having one wild-ass ride through adulthood over the past...well, it's been a long time. As we lurch into the flames & bloodshed of Summer 2024, he's out running a promo camapign for The Last Supper, his new album on Man Bites Dog Records. He's been rolling with MBDR for a long time now; it's crazy to think that God Save The King dropped over a decade ago. It's even crazier to think that Copywrite, of all the motherfuckers from Ohio, got Roc Marciano and Casual on a song together. (No, really.)

Twenty years is a long time to be fighting for food in the indie rap ecosystem. During that span, Copy has been battling, primarily with himself. The punchline king of Columbus managed to avoid being reduced to someone else's punchline after his iconic knockout loss to Icon the Mic King at that one Scribble Jam way back when. (Made all the more hilarious by the fact Michael King is an extremely nice, polite dude.)

Copywrite has also been wrestling with his own legacy. While the man is justly renowned for his brutal one-liners and world class shit-talking, what really cemented his rep was "June," an RJD2-produced tribute to his dead father. The man is never more electric than when he turns his weapons on himself, and for this single, he's channeling exactly that kind of raw live-wire confessional. The content is nothing new, but the delivery is: his stutter-stop flow patterns are an undeniably impressive technical workout. It's also a 10 pound blivet bursting under the strain of 20 pounds of product.

Still, credit is due for an artist still pushing himself & exploring new facets of the artform, especially considering how many emcees from that heady Def Jux era expect to be treated as legends today for what they did in 2005. Copywrite has been out here in the fucking trenches. And to think, he could have retired like Yak Ballz to some cushy nothingburger VP sinecure at the House of Bronfman!

Speaking of retirement, we've got another phoned-in feature from Slug, whose past decade has been a living experiment in monetized dad rap. He decided to cut his part for the video dressed up like Terry Richardson, which is resonant. Like Nas or Big Boi, Sean Daley is one of the few rappers who can sell out big rooms packed full of 2-3 generations worth of stage eyes. He's a happily married dad now, but the reality-distorting effects of Atmosphere's whitebread success story will continue to be felt for years to come. (Just consider the fact that "Slug is my favourite rapper of all time after Tupac" is an actual, existing sentence.) 

Atmosphere tours on performing The Hits, but their actual album output over the past decade has been something else entirely, more experimental than ever. It's often boring as fuck, too. Few rappers have the economy of power to sustain the kind of exacting minimalism that makes Ka or Mach-Hommy work. It's not just the flat delivery, though: Slug's pen game has notably suffered every damn time I've heard him in the past five years. He was always a "first draft bars" kind of rapper, wandering through broken metaphors, sounding like a great drunken freestyle in some kitchen at 3 am. He also built that into a brand that's still moving merch to this day.

It's good to see Pete Nelson doing good. For all his justified angst & rap-hands mania, the man has a life, a dog, and some semblance of peace. He has surely earned it all. This here music video, though? It's just awkward, bud. It would have been a stronger song without the feature. Two Dickies.

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.

 

Ghostface Killah - "Set The Tone (Guns & Roses)"

Pretty Toney is a wizard of pure chaos. He's given the game some of the finest LPs we will ever study, but even them classics were full of curveballs. It's hard to make a case that his catalog is all classics at this point, and that's coming from a big fan of Ghostdini's weirdo excesses. I managed to avoid the hype cycle on this one; all I needed to know was that it was finally coming. Right on schedule, it's May 10th, 2024 and we've all woken up to a new album from Ghostface Killah.

And, once again: pure fucking chaos. Seeing Fat Joe or Jim Jones on the tracklist makes sense, but how Ja Rule wound up here seems like an important scoop for actual music journalists to pursue. Is that poor midget bastard still working through contractual obligations to UMG decades later? If so, he deserves it. I don't hate humanity enough to say we deserve him, but his Cam'Ron imitation here was a better showing than I expected. Props, little dude!

The most striking surprise on Set The Tone is how squarely Bulletproof Wallets the opening salvo was, right on down to "Pair of Hammers." a slow, grimy banger with Method Man. When Raekwon rolls out to rock some uptempo pimp funk followed by a single with Nas? It would be reasonable to expect an album full of throwback filth like this. If you were dealing with someone else.

Not that it goes weird right away. Ghost's hook game is god tier on "No Face," which Kanye West kills, no question. An album of Ghost and Ye trading technicolor braggadocio would probably echo for decades. That slams into the classic reggae remix of "Champion Sound," then the 90's chill of "Cape Fear," and all is right again with the world. His team-up with AZ on "Locked In" is equally triumphant shit, a slice of 00's radio-rap heaven and one of the best songs here.

The album takes a hard left with "Plan B," which could be the funniest and least appropriate R&B joint Pretty Toney's ever done. Where 2Chainz makes Top 40 trap operas funny with his verse, Ghostdini imbues his unhinged energy into the entire track. These are Frank Zappa grade parodies of form, and he's only doing it to pop off many dozens of hilarious jokes, too. All told, this joint is way more Fishscale than Ironman. The whole second half is club songs of various regional flavors, many of them hilarious, some of them excellent.

This joint also turns out to be more of a prequel than a statement. Track 18: "Yo, what's really good. I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. That was the album." Then he announces "Supreme Clientele 2...Indiana Tone and the Temple of Goons or something like that." So much for all the expert Podcast-Americans who insisted this album was mostly tracks from the forever-awaited Purple Tape sequel. Get fucked, nerds.

Everything wraps on a speaker-folding club single with Remy Ma, and in retrospect, all this chaos makes sense. A hot mess of self-indulgence, self-mastery and hungry intensity, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) is another cinematic, psychedelic head trip from Wu-Tang's Finest. 

Larger than life even past the age of 50, Ghostface Killah dropped the most important album of the month, re-centering New York City with a summer worth of anthem joints. Like Christopher Nolan's film Tenet, the artistry is too perfected for me to complain about plot points from the cheap seats. There is only one accurate verdict here. Five Dickies.

NF - "MOTTO"

 

When Lou Mackey sent me this video, I assumed that was a recommendation. As it turns out, he was actually asking me to stop for a moment so that he could use my boots & pantslegs to scrape some dogshit off his shoes. 

Prior to pressing play, I thought that NF might have evolved into something interesting & new. The kid has been an anomaly for a long time, a high-charting "Christian" rapper whose faith has always been curiously absent from his actual albums. Nonetheless, the boy moves units in an era where most major artists are faking streams. He has mustered a successful, touring career with almost zero mention from Our Extremely Online Rap Discourse.

Every Christian worships in their own way, but allow me to throw some stones. Brothers & Sisters: If you spend some time listening to NF, you'll find his relationship with the almighty provides him with no purpose, no answers, no comfort, and no validation. For this, he turns to the same crass materialism as his secular competition, song after song. Pride goeth before a hit single, and greed will never go out of style here in America.

"I just want to sign a record deal," he half-sings in the same studied poses G-Eazy and Post Malone trained in, "maybe buy a house up in the hills." That's off "When I Grow Up," another flawlessly done music video that spotlights NF's major assets. He is a hyperactive freak, a class clown goofball & a natural actor. He's also got so much social anxiety you have to wonder if the kid buried bodies somewhere shallow. 

He is a perfect pop product, an everyman who always wants to win, but never feels like all his winning is enough. That's why he's so relentlessly relatable: an affluent adult child, more free than most human beings in history could imagine, yet haunted by voices in his own head, paralyzed by nothing remotely real. He's just like us!

Any reasonable person would expect a turn, a twist, some sign of self-awareness that every single second of this song & video are a Disney Channel awkward rendition of Marshall Mathers karaoke. Nothing like that happens, but I must credit the man with being a better dancer than his idol. NF makes the most of his OCD mania on camera, throwing himself into his takes, doing his goofy little stunts. That charm is killed dead by how depressing it all is, though: the sets, the extras, the time, the money, all of it so this boring dude could make his dream version of "The Real Slim Shady." That shit was stupid the first time, too.

NF is at the height of his long, cynical career, and this is really all he's got. Real Yeti Rap is not buying. I consider "MOTTO" to be closer to "Do The Bartman" grade novelty songs than any kind of actual white rap music on par with Haystak or Vanilla Ice. Zero Dickies.

Nickelus F - "Tectonics"

 

 

I'm old enough to remember when Nickelus F lost that battle to Shellz. He was a teenage wunderkind Unsigned Hype, way back when my people (Rural-Cracker Americans) were still taking The Source seriously enough to steal copies off the magazine racks. Hell, I even had friends who would tear out pages and hang them on their walls. Everybody wanted to be Eminem and nobody was addicted to prescription opiates yet. It was a hell of a time to be alive. After that, of course, music journalism got killed by free blogs & autistic trolls, and now you're all stuck in here with me.

Certain industry plants may be getting a lot of press in recent weeks, but for a cultural institution of Real Yeti Rap's magnitude & heft? None of that dogshit noise exists. Nobody who buys verses is part of the conversation. Dope ghostwriters are, though, and it's great to see artists like Nickelus F (or Quentin Miller) getting their due after decades in the trenches. Doing the actual work. Paying a lot of wasted dues, too. Whether it's New York, Los Angeles or Nashville, none of those motherfuckers love you, and they have been bleeding talent to death for a hundred years now. And almost all of it is legal.

"Look: I found my way, went from Soundcloud to paid from mixtapes in all the gas stations around the way." This is a technician who knows better than to be too rigid with the rhymes. The real hypnosis is delivering all that signal casually, conversationally, and he walks that high wire end to end here. Like the late great Fred the Godson, his delivery is careful camouflage. There are deliberate drops in the bar schemes, sudden turns into new pockets, and repetitions that almost sound like mistakes. And all of it is perfect.

Most of those Unsigned Hype artists never amounted to shit. Which isn't to say they never made great music, just that this business is a cold, cruel graveyard. Promising careers get destroyed every day, and often for no real reason; just clipped in the crossfire between vanity, money, and nepotism hires.

That's just The Business, though. Sure, they dominate the discourse, shape the history, and own most of the master recordings, but that's only ever just The Business. The Genre is something else altogether. Something bigger, too. Saigon just dropped a video for "Stocking Cap" back in February. Ghostface has a new LP about to drop, Supastition is repping North Carolina in high style again, and Blu is sounding better than ever. I could go on for many, many thousands of words. Christ Almighty, even Buck 65 is back from the deep stacks and dropping a legendary run of new material.

These are glorious days for The Genre, the increasingly global temple of hip hop exploring this infinite canvas, all collaborating & competing. We're all going to win, too. Four Dickies. 

Cookin Soul & Raz Fresco - "Snakes & Ladders"

Cookin Soul is a reliable brand and a long, weird story. Originally a Blog Era duo devoted to cornball novelty mashup mixtapes, these days it's a one man band delivering nothing but soulfood-ass beats. In a business where consistency matters, Big Size keeps his product staggeringly on-brand.

Raz Fresco has made himself a legend off nothing but talent, work ethic, and a fundamentalist devotion to The Culture. His particular schism is extremely 90's, distinctly New York, and steeped in the street gematria of Five-Percent Nation mathematics. These are all good things. Inevitably, these labyrinths of referential wordplay can feel rote, almost paint-by-numbers, but the kid carries that raw, original flaming fire in his heart. He is always on point.

"Snakes & Ladders" is exactly that. Sure, Main Source shout-outs and acronym games may sound decades old, but fuck, what a great decade that was. More importantly, this beat is an absolutely perfect slice of melodic filth, all vibrating in tune with one of the best bass chops I've heard from anyone in 2024. 

Fresco floats over this like a professional should, nimble with the flow patterns but never getting handcuffed to his own rhyme schemes. No question, he's delivered better verses in the past year. (Tons of them, in fact, often alongside artists like Estee Nack who force everyone else in the room to put in 110%.) But this is still 99th percentile performance, especially by the remedial standards of contemporary "rappers."

Press play and let this one run, bud. There isn't a single second out of place here; the beat, the verses and the video are a single organism, breathing as one. This is a pure signal from the high holy frontiers of the true school underground. Four Dickies.

Lil Uzi Vert - "Pink Tape"

I was told by a cool dozen of my Online Rap Friends™ that I should check out the new Lil Uzi Vert LP. An admirably bold stance to take, considering how fucking stupid you sound simply saying his name. I was told this wasn't exactly a great album, but it was very "interesting." That word, it kept coming up. Yet although I feel personally wronged, by all of you, I must concede it's vague enough to be factual: this is a very interesting album.

The music, of course, is trash. Lil Uzi Vert has always been at the emo-rap forefront of fetal alcohol collateral damage, trying desperately to communicate a feeling, a vibe. Raised by television sets and handheld screens, they don't even know that humankind already has a rich heritage of shared technology to communicate feelings, one older than any nation on earth, older than history itself. It's called songwriting. That doesn't happen much here.

When the dirt dog god Russell Tyrone Jones was freestyling first-take impressionist art, he was channeling actual genius, not to mention riding the waves of Led Zeppelin amounts of intoxicants. Lil Uzi Vert? He's just kind of trying things out. If you're reading this: great job. You should keep experimenting. In private, for at least a decade, before you burden us with anything else.

What's interesting, then, is how any of this happened at all. Even coming from the post-Generation X wasteland of feral 80's Babies, we were still very much shaped by Our Parents Music, still fluent in decades of worth of eras, genres and fads. There were certain standards. There is a lineage from Pink Floyd to Radiohead, from Prince to D'Angelo, from Detroit house to eurotechno trash. Decades later, it would appear that eurotechno trash somehow won the war, flattening all that culture into an endless loop of major key EDM trap garbage playing in every gas station convenience store in America. Verily, all of these people must die.

The great thing about multiple generations of brain-damaged consumers is, you can sell them anything. The downside of that is, anyone can sell them anything, so in the past two decades the megacorporations who control entertainment have been having a hard time. Despite all their pretensions of data-driven decision making, it's mighty hard to miss the fact most of their products are failures. 

 

Part of that is because the music business was created by organized crime to launder money. Part of that is because their "data" is mostly their own bullshit numbers. Anyone who thinks 4Batz or Chance the Rappers happen organically is retarded -- not in some cruel, pejorative sense, but as an objective medical diagnosis.

An oral history accounting of how all this goofy horseshit was "written," tracked & recorded would be very interesting, too. Thanks to Rick Rubin and Young Guru, being a recording engineer can seem like a glamorous gig until you make the mistake of actually getting involved. Those poor bastards suffer, and suffer mightily. I pray that everyone involved with this was a fan, but I also know better.

The most awkward thing about the industry is how much you all have to lie about each other, to pretend that a Taylor Swift is somehow operating at the same level as a Lana Del Ray, or that Beyonce Knowles-Carter can muster the vision or depth of Erykah Badu-3000. Constant, "the floor is lava" style delusional word games. It wears you down. The drugs don't help, but neither does going sober. You join the Illuminati, you cash out with enough money for your llama farm, or you die, young & dumb.

To me, one of the most fascinating thought experiments is "Imposter Syndrome." I struggle to imagine what it would be like, how it would feel to doubt myself. In this, me and Lil Uzi Vert are blood brothers, the same glorious species of stupid. Past that, I hear only the stress fractures of a small engine being pushed past all limits, seconds away from that eternal sunshine. Everyone who enabled that inevitable death has sinned before God, but I hope I'm wrong; I hope that he lives to be a wealthy old gremlin freak, like Flava Flav.

Gillian Welch nailed it: "People often ask me to talk about my songs. Whatever I have to say about the song, kinda made it into the song." Lil Uzi Vert is a pathological extrovert who loves making music and has nothing, nothing at all, to say. Zero Dickies.

Jump Back & Kiss Myself

For awhile there, we had a great run. Real Yeti Rap was a reliable, respected resource for pure petrochemical grade slander. 

In an underground every bit as boring as the music industry success stories they resent, there are endless targets in perpetual view around here. People caught feelings. Extremely entertaining feelings. Rappers, perhaps the dumbest motherfuckers in the English speaking world, deserve to suffer the slings & arrows. And we are very much here to serve.

We also gave props due to dope shit. That policy will continue. We respect our elders (if they can spit) and we support young talent. When we press play, we seldom expect to hear anything even decent, but when it turns out to be a cat like Avenue, it's always a blessing. Keep 'em coming.

But mostly, Real Yeti Rap is about the purifying properties of fire. We love rap music on a cellular level. And it is because we love rap music that we want most of you to stop trying. Nobody benefits from your exertions, not even you. Helping a suffering struggle rapper realize they are destined for greatness in real estate, retail or hospitality is a victory for the culture. Every time.

Joyner Lucas - "I'm Not Racist"

When you start off your video with a heavyset white man in a fake MAGA hat dropping a dozen n-bombs into the camera, it's pretty obvious we're dealing with a Serious Artistic Statement. This is a subgenre that tends to suck, but Mr. Lucas really delivered the goods here, spraying shots in all directions. He operates on so many simultaneous levels of caricature it approaches art.

The hype for Joyner Lucas is hard to avoid anywhere in New England, even the Outer Sticks I reside in. Despite that, I didn't know for a fact that he was black until about a minute into this video -- his grievances against other black men are just too articulated. Nobody wearing a real MAGA hat could muster such a cutting, knowing argument...not even Malik Obama, since he's actually a white guy running a (shitty) parody account on Twitter.

Now, most Trump supporters think Steve Jobs died of Gay AIDS, and Jewish physicists don't really resonate with that demographic. Joyner Lucas has a much higher opinion of white people than actual white people do, but this doesn't really dilute his big moment at all. He's grabbing so many third rails at once, the sheer juice powers past little details like that. Again, this is a Serious Artistic Statement.

As such, it bangs. This is a song that could have taken hundreds of wrong turns, but Lucas never lets go of the raw urgency and honesty of the opening barrage. More than that, his writing is tightly cut, a conversational jazz piece that camouflages the intricacy of his rhyme schemes.

As a career move, this reaches further and costs less than a Quavo hook or a Nicki Minaj feature. JUST SAY SOMETHING REAL. Everyone wants to be famous, but yet few self-professed artists are willing to put their dick on the line quite like this.

The secret sauce, of course, is nihilism. You see it in the refrains that run through both verses: the hypocrisy, the victimhood, the self-deception, the laziness -- humans in general are generally shit. America will never get over blackness or whiteness, it's true, but there's really no good reason that we should. I am all for poking these wounds in the meantime.

It's a shame he worships Eminem so much, though. Especially when he's delivering a better product than Marshall ever could have written.

Three Lil Dickys for the ambition & songwriting skills, and one more for the incredible lip-sync performance that tubby cracker puts on here. Without him, this video just wouldn't have the impact. Paul McCartney wrote a song about this with Stevie Wonder, I think.

The Doppelgangaz - "If It Wasn't For The Cloak"

I've always had a hard time getting into The Doppelgangaz and not a damn thing has changed in 2017. As much as we all want to be unique, rapping raps and making beats is nothing special. The cloaks are cool and the aesthetic is fun, but The Doppelgangaz are typical hip hop story: a rapping duo with great beats...and one good rapper.

That would be Matter Ov Fact, who goes first here. He'll never re-invent the wheel, but he'll never deliver a half-ass take, either. He is smooth, clever, confident and a world apart from the tag-along filler that EP brings to the table.

"Gangaz really out here, movin' on excursions/ never not without beer, shorties ain't no virgins" -- those are EP's opening bars here. That horseshit is unforgivable. You're an adult male human being, write like one. I want to tell myself that this dude could be funnier or better if he tried harder, but in my heart, I know that is a lie.

Every turn of his soft little sixteen here is atrocious, the work of someone who is forcing his flow patterns to fit...and doesn't read very much. Hell, it doesn't even sound like he listens to other people talk very much. Stilted and stumbling. His whole verse is Google Translated from Russian: awkward as fuck, bud.

It makes sense that these guys are huge in Europe, where dope beats are at a premium and good English is not.

Now, the video. This is a very fucking nice video, pal, a serious piece of work. Clean drone work and smooth composition. It looks great and it made me laugh at several points: I expect little else, here in the Kali Yuga.

I also dig the fact they've got Big Josh posted up smoking. Just because. (If you don't know Big Josh, well, check out "Shawty Told Me.")

All in all, this is a Two Dicky affair. As much as I want to give respect to their accomplishments and just enjoy the vibe -- and the crushing wall of glorious sound that is this beat -- I can't. The mediocrity just kills my fucking high. No love.

Deniro Farrar - "Nervous"

Deniro Farrar takes flow patterns very seriously. His verses don't deviate a single syllable for this whole song. That's not unusual for Mr. Farrar. He's almost always sharp & crisp like that.

But, you know, North Carolina. That's a sweet spot for hip hop, always has been, where Dirty South crashes up against East Coast True School heads. This is the state that gave us Supastition and Petey Pablo. I mention them because Farrar, at times, sounded like a CRISPR splice hybrid of those two exact emcees. "Nervous" is not one of those times, though. This is a good rapper getting great before our eyes -- his last two EP's are cold killer material.

The point is getting distinctive, right? Carving your own lane? Evolving your own style? I'm preaching to a dwindling congregation, but my conviction has never wavered on this. I'm not rooting for Deniro Farrar because he's "talented" -- that shit is cheap and abundant -- but because he's becoming a unique talent. I would wish the same for any of you reading this: become the monster you alone were destined to be.

The actual video is a clever low-budget triumph. Just a couple simple sets and some carefully coordinated camera work. It doesn't look like a million bucks, but it sure as shit keeps you watching. The same charisma that sells this cat onstage translates to The Youtubes: "telegenic," they used to call it.

As for the extended outro, well, I reckon he earned it.

Third time in a row I'm awarding a Three Dicky verdict. This streak is strictly accidental, but I'm none too worried about featuring some good shit for the rest of September, either.

Fred The Godson - "Intro / Let It Cook"

Fred The Godson might be operating with a handicap or three, but rapping is not one of them. Dude can spit. His grating, disinterested delivery may be an acquired taste, but his pen game is impeccable at this point. Like Conway or Pusha T, his nonchalance is camouflage, the confidence of a careful writer.

This is a breezy, stripped-down video that makes it clear he's got verses for years on deck. I know nothing about the Heatmakerz, but that's because I have no tolerance for this kind of paint-by-numbers, soul-chop fast food. The best that can be said for these beats is that they don't get in the way.

Fred is a busy man, though, following a classic NYC career path. There are better beats in his future.

It was 2011 when he was first injected into the American Dream courtesy of XXL's annual Freshman list. For perspective, the list that year included Lil' B and Kendrick Lamar. As we approach the event horizon of the Shitty Future Singularity, that amounts to a cool 20 years of cultural churn. The music industry is cruel, but surviving it must be satisfaction enough, right?

There's a hard limit on next level rhyme writing. The better you are, the more dipshits you're going to lose along the way. Guys like Big Sean and Fabolous tried to straddle both sides of that fence, and the results are too ugly to look at for long. You have to choose a fucking side.

I mention that because Fred made the right decision. There are a lot of career trajectories available after landing an XXL spot like that. Danny Brown ascended to a living god. Yelawolf devolved into a Kid Rock understudy. Takes all kinds.

Three Dickys. Fred carried this and everyone else involved had the good sense to get out of the way.

UPDATE: Yes, I have since been informed that Heatmakerz produced over 85% of the Dipset classics I grew up on. I'm leaving that line as is.

A$AP Ferg - "East Coast Remix"

"Every single time I come you niggas know I gotta do it," Busta Rhymes admits immediately. There are worse fates than making self-caricature money, of course, and Busta has always done it admirably. His chopping itself is losing precision, but his flow is still some nimble, inventive shit.

More British than Jamaican, more brand than rapper, Mr. Rhymes transcends critique, at this point. He is Snoop Dogg echelon unfuckwithable. Onward.

The biggest takeaway from "East Coast Remix" is the fact Dave East spit one of the best verses of his career on this. In the past, we have been firm and fair about his professional-grade mediocrity. Based on what he did here, though, I'm going to check his new project out now. That's unusual.

A$AP Rocky, as ever, delivers the goods on sheer flow patterns and energy. To come after that and show him up is an achievement. That said, to do all that on a track you have to share with French Montana ... must be pretty depressing. Puffy 2.0 is a consistent letdown, but also a reliable clown who can be endearing through sheer excess. This is one of those moments.

Rick Ross. This fucking guy. Despite being a photocopy of a fabricated persona, he's still one of the realest rappers out -- a fat sweaty creep who jokes about date rape and celebrates consumer nihilism better than anyone except Cardi B & Kanye West. The Trump administration will definitely gift this tubby toucher with a lucrative second act. This is America, after all.

Naturally enough, they wrap this joint up with Snoop Dogg. Everything about it is baffling - the cheap phone camera take juxtaposed against the fact Snoop actually brought some bars to the table for this one. I can't explain it either.

Overall, this was a pure slice of our current dystopia: the highs and lows, baby. Three Dickys. Well done.

Rittz - "Indestructable"

Early in his career, Rittz cemented himself as one of the best choppers alive. He's effortlessly fast. Most choppers want you to see them sweat, they make a whole performance of pushing the very limits of human endurance.

And that shit is corny as hell.

Rittz has too much faith in his bars to resort to gimmicks like that. Rittz is a Georgia gentleman: cool, calm and conversational. Steeped in rock and soul, capable of actually singing, he's been a reliable source for quality hooks since his mixtape days. That kind of clout leads to excesses like the 90 second extended intro here, but it also led to excesses like Stankonia or Maggot Brain -- great damn albums, in other words.

Now, it's quite probable that the next Rittz LP, Last Call, won't be that good. Rittz has been under some bad influences lately. He came up with genre-mongrelizing male model Yelawolf, whose career is a bloody trail of Dr. Moreau collaborations, stillborn hooks staple-gunned to the corpses of Scott Storch leftovers. Then he found a home at Strange Music, the epicenter of prog rock hip hop for Juggalo-curious MMA fans.

Despite all that, it's impressive how much Rittz has remained his own mammal.

This video treatment is pretty fucking hilarious. That is not intended as a compliment. This is shot so competently it highlights the total lack of imagination in every frame with the crisp clarity of an Ansel Adams print. The result is somewhere between an 80's After School Special and an Adult Swim meta-parody, the spectacle of a zombie powered by its own entrails.

One Dicky because this is Rittz. Can't find much else to redeem it, I'd just feel weird giving this nothing.

Skepta - "Hypocrisy"

Skepta is both wealthy and successful, thanks to his commanding stage presence, his multiple income streams, and the fact he's one of the few listenable British rappers alive. So it's a pity his lyrics verge into such cheap rubbish. Read that last sentence with a British accent to get it right.

This one, too: "Every day I'm pissing and shitting on this hypocrisy"

It's been a rough year for hooks, in an ugly decade for hooks, in a genre that never cared much for hooks to begin with. Even by those standards, Skepta was born at the right time. The Anglosphere has been losing their shit for decades, of course, but the past two years have seen it finally implode into infancy, all piss and shit and dick jokes. Trump is but a symptom. These motherfuckers are gone, and Skepta may have just the soundtrack they need.

Or he may grow into something better eventually. "I declined some amazing dinners" is a nicely cut sentence, for instance. I'm educated enough to grok the fact he's talking shit about the Queen Mother in the second verse, something I support. Burn it all down. Anytime the UK wants to exterminate that entire family, I'll start taking them seriously.

Here in our Post-Eminem wasteland, most celebrity punchlines are cheap hyperbole. In this case I'm inclined to believe him. What the fuck does a son of Nigeria care about the House of Windsor? The British are weak, frail animals, but none are more fragile than their ruling class. As Churchill once famously remarked, "Inbreeding is a hell of a drug."

This video is a bright, colorful and clever piece of work. I'm confident that I'm far too American and white to appreciate the references here, but I'm going to say it's a tribute to Street Karaoke, the only Nigerian TV show I've ever seen. This is what serious music critics do: we make it about ourselves.

One Dicky for the folks who directed & edited this here video. You're the real heroes.

DISPATCHES: Post Malone - Congratulations ft. Quavo

Post Malone is the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen. His physical appearance wouldn’t matter if he had talent, but all he does is ape the movements and inflection of a million other almost famous white rappers. Watching this video elicits heavy despair and sullen contemplation. Within a single viewing, I can feel how distant, far and unreachable the righteous path has gone; I can somehow also smell his breath through the moving images.

Austin Post “Malone” should be a mistake. Three-hundred and ninety-million views, and only one out of every 12 people watching, slam the dislike button. That is a deliberate conspiracy against the good, perpetuated by villains behind curtains I know not.

As the confetti flies over the sound of descending trap snares, I give thanks for the happy accident that he is he and I am me. I would bear the whips and scorns of time a millionfold as a peasant girl in the Middle Ages of Europe to not be this rap hippy soft Drexel Spivey Kid Rock in vocal blackface. His lyrics? An ode to winning the corporate music lottery. His flow? Expertly crafted to cater to the label overlords, so much so, that I have to assume this dude was probably a teacher’s pet, an A+ plus student in school; that is, if he did, indeed, write this piece of shit. He may have searched for originality at one point in his life but it is evident that he’s come up empty.

Wikipedia writes that his vocals have been described as laconic, but I feel that to be imperially merciful. They are distilled banality, pure purposelessness save 21 year old hedonism, on a level that could only come from a place where the sterile mathematics of profit over content control it’s subjugates; stringless, wooden-brained meat marionettes vibing with people who may have had talent at one point, hoping that they can cover up the shame and embarrassment of being walking dead. Thrust forward into life without entrails or pithe, hanging on Instagram or Twitter like life-sustaining IV drips, for a check that will dissipate faster than their momentary fame. YO POST! Congratulations.

How long do we let it slide? How long before it all falls down and there’s no time left? Do not let the The Thing Behind Your Eyes become a ghost. If you are reading this, you do, in fact, deserve better, for you are now with the gods. Brush your teeth, grab a molotov cocktail and start running. As always, the power to do and be better is microcosmically and macrocosmically dependent on you, and you alone.

Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire - "Manboy"

Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire has always been a great name, but somehow it becomes even greater when you see it on Wikipedia. That's a big deal for any mammal. This cat is proof that you can get famous for fucking up -- a proud hip hop tradition that spans from RA the Rugged Man to Lupe Fiasco.

A damn good thing, in other words. Artists are fuckups, bud. Ask Johnny Cash.

eXquire's path was inevitable. Projects like Kismet are way too much for the likes of the Universal machine. He is the best possible mix of brilliantly smart and bluntly crude. He is also a born surrealist. Even his most stripped-down, classically rapping-ass rap video was full of Jodorowsky touches. (If you haven't seen "The Last Huzzah," fix that ASAP.)

"Manboy" kicks off with some Anticon shit over some old-school CGI footage of conception. Then the verse starts. A video treatment that looks corny at first starts getting compelling as fuck. Front to back, this is a great study in making low-budget ideas work. The key to separating yourself from the average mog is doing at least three times more work than the average mog.

Out of all the shit I've written about this year, this morsel right here gives me the most hope. My favorite shit about rap music, aside from the dope rap music, is watching artists evolve into the monsters they were meant to be.

A strange, dope video; a wall of bars over a minimalist beat; an honest lunatic at the top of his game. There's no way I could give this less than four Dickies in good conscience.

The Faze - "The Black Slim Shady"

This is an incredibly fucking stupid concept that, somehow, really works. This is a Cali struggle rapper doing an Eminem impersonation over the instrumental track for "Duel of the Iron Mic." All of this is gimmick blasphemy on paper, but yet The Faze pulled it off.

Which is good and bad, of course. To his credit, everything I dislike about this song is everything I dislike about Eminem.

Predictable punchlines about celebrities, a worldview shaped entirely by cable TV, the cadence that emphasizes the rhyme patterns with the same subtle touch Hulk Hogan brought to acting. He definitely nailed it. Wisely, he cuts closer to early, indie Mathers than the past decade of Muppet Screamo Rap that has defined Eminem's second act.

And for what, though? This video has racked up fewer views than that Gark Mavigan creampuff.

The Faze never deviates much from the same four patterns he starts with, but shit, neither did Em. This is the kind of gimmick that should work -- should raise attention, should get casual listeners curious about what else he's released. There is chaos under heaven, comrades. Rap music, as a culture and a business, is broken on a structural level, even as the talent pool grows bigger than ever.

I'm fine with The Faze desecrating some classic RZA shit, whatever, everything crumbles. I'm less accepting of the naked cultural appropriation. Eminem is an abusive, sexually dysfunctional, opiate-addicted white man, and I don't think that a black guy from California can really understand that life. His caricature cheapens the history of my people.

I forgive him, though. I forgive him and I wish him the best. Two dickies for execution and props to Foreign Shooter on the video itself.