Tosten Burks stays hydrated.
On prog-trap trio Hurt Everybody’s new single, “Social Network (Gang),” after Supa Bwe on hook duty yells “Gang!” until he’s hoarse, fellow thunder god Mick Jenkins opens his assault with a slurred wink: “It’s really a song about being with all of my friends.”
The latest single from Hurt’s upcoming mixtape 2K47 celebrates the squad by throwing shade. Mick calls out radio’s obsession with wrists and toasts Canada Dry with your girl. Carl seizes the throne and eats the crown. Mulatto’s hollow deconstructed drill sounds like a drive-by on the outskirts of Orbit City.
U mad? Mick’s been on his P’s and Q’s, but now he preaches to Harvard’s quants. His present run preceding Wave[s], piggybacking on the The Water[s], has left blood on the carpet and Gift of Gab perplexed. He is qualitative proof rappers can still proffer truth by actually rapping.
Literary tools persist, can still palliate the physical. Here, swatting away the Innanet all up in his face, Mick prosecutes Freshmen penmanship and plots a future more like “Earl and them.” Jaden Smith jokes over Skrillex beats pull him from the pulpit into the trenches. Lines are drawn, partitions. Roc Boys and industry plants get prescribed Sinemet®.
Carl, 18, the monotone boy genius superego to Supa’s unhinged autotuned id, should also make scribblers shake in their boots.
Last Fourth of July, after dropping out of high school before senior year, he was already turning deeper phrases than the YCA figureheads, but maybe the city wasn’t prepared for xanned-out literary Pokémon nerds wailing, “Bitch I’m royal,” over Joanna Newsom’s harp.
“The tides sing a silent tune
Of ‘I’ and ‘U’ and other vowels
My father forgot how my mother my sounds
She don’t say much when the sun’s around”
Carl, “My Pack”
More recently Carl stole last month’s stacked local compilation double-mixtape The CSS, methodically spraying lithe anapests and dactyls over Martin $ky’s twitchy space signals like the Big Aristotle on adderall (“Spit in that shou shu, I’m Shaq, you a-shamed”) and spinning cemetery noir over (Jenkins’ tour DJ) Green Sllime’s quivering strings, smoking buddha with a ghost from the future who warns him not to become a shooter, pusher, or politician.
On this statement single, rather than taunt, Carl is content to flex technique, spiraling trochaically down a wormhole of internal rhyme with the charisma of Pete Townshend, the wisdom of Master Roshi, and hella lightning and monsters in the crowd. Angry graphic novel rap, spazzing like Bizarro-Shakespeare. Gangster magic ‘fore he eats his breakfast. When Carl attacks the Throne, it’s with knowledge of the new prince. Not that it matters. This song is about friends. Both Mulatto and Carl have spots on Mick’s looming album, while 2K47 dropped last Saturday (below).
https://soundcloud.com/mickjenkinsmusic/alchemy-prod-by-lee-bannon
https://soundcloud.com/the-css/07-ghosts-prod-green-sllime
https://soundcloud.com/the-css/taxszn-prod-martin-ky
