Tosten Burks is exempt from taking Detroit 101 because he passed the AP Detroit exam in high school.
This is hip-hop that makes people shout out “this is hip-hop.” A posse cut whose participants actually sound like they’re all members of the same posse. Internal rhyme after internal rhyme of cocksure, gun-cock rhythm turns of phrases that are the perfect amount of menacing.
These are six verses of bulldozer rap, a song that can’t help but feel threatening, not because Ro Spit and company are overtly trying to scare, but because they are just built that way, mother fucker. Somehow they overshadow the beat, a fantastic Martian gutter banger produced by Koen, who manages to capture Detroit’s hazy, bleak hardness while hailing from across the Atlantic in Holland.
It’s called “Detroit 101.” By the song’s own logic, nothing could be more apt. “Detroit swings the hardest quotes, like pillowcases filled with bars of soap,” Guilty Simpson brags. It’s crisp, bitter, and will wash the fuck out of your mouth if you disagree.
Ro Spit’s mixtape The Glass Ceiling Project, on which the song is a bonus track, is thoroughly fresh, and while it might not steal the show from next week’s Black and Brown, it will at least satisfy your Detroit thirst while you wait.
