Will Hagle did not pump this up like Dee Brown.
The rest of the world was introduced to Chicago’s harrowing new form of gangster rap when Kanye decided to remix Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like.” The song found ‘Ye firing off a barrage of names of young rappers from Chicago. Then he stepped off the plane in Qatar to design hotels and nail it. Kanye is as emotionally distant from the city he enlisted Chris Martin to sing about as Derrick Rose is right now.
But if Kanye remains globetrotting, the least we can hope for is that he acts as an ambassador. When Justin Bieber’s visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam somehow became national news, the media’s general consensus was that if his comments inspired just one belieber to pick up Anne Frank’s diary, this’d all be worth it. All we can hope is that one befuddled Kanye fan in some distant corner of the world consults RapGenius to decipher the line “Shout out to L-E-P, Jay Boogie right?” Right?
What that fan would find is the LEP Bogus Boys, a duo with the street hardness and knowledge of youngsters like Chief Keef but a throwback poise reminiscent of aging 90s-era MCs. The Bogus Boys recently released a track called “Coroner Van,” which borrows its title and hook from Jadakiss’s “Made You Look” remix. The song was released in anticipation of Frank The Butcher’s forthcoming mixtape, All Is Fair, which will celebrate the launch of his BAU clothing line. In Chiraq, apparently, “why put you in a verse when I could put you in a coroner van” is considered a strong marketing tagline.
“Coroner Van” has a gritty beat with organ-stabs fit for a horror movie, and the boys are as menacing as the track’s production. When they threaten to turn white tee-shirts burgundy, they sound believable. The duo also references Dee Brown, and I can only hope they’re talking about one of my favorite basketball players, the one that led the University of Illinois to the 2005 national championship game. Illinois isn’t all that bad after all [ed. note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqxaGNbTIOk.] Unfortunately, they follow the basketball reference with “shots ricochet and catch ‘em on the rebound.” It’s never a good sign for a society when truly violent gangster rap comes back. It’s a sign of something gone wrong. But then again, this is good.
