MobbDeen he wrote.
We might be stuck with this alcoholic, rap-by-commission ass nigga. This asshole just repeated the same trick he pulled off with that “Pop That” shit, but with fewer training wheels this time. By “this asshole,” I mean the puppet-master, Diddy. I smell his money-laden fingerprints all over this mess. And by “fewer training wheels,” I mean instead of throwing French on a song with a bulletproof Uncle Luke sample, Rawse, Drake AND Wayne, his Diddiness decided to settle for a bulletproof Chaka Demus & The Pliers sample along with an appropriately islandy Nicki Minaj. So the formula hasn’t really changed much. And guess what? It’ll work again.
It’s almost kinda admirable to witness French Montana parla… oops, my bad, fanute the art of networking and minimal personality into rap superstardom. The man is literally a rapping DJ Khaled, or more accurately, a rap cipher. I know you folks are too lazy to go look that up and it’s growing increasingly difficult to keep writing about a guy that has no discernible uniqueness to his personality, so I’m going to copy and paste a few of the dictionary definitions of “cipher” right here. Trust me, it’s a helpful exercise:
- The mathematical symbol (0) denoting absence of quantity; zero.
- An Arabic numeral or figure; a number.
- One having no influence or value; a nonentity.
That’s some shockingly useful shit for a bloggerist that needs to pad out an article the same way French Montana pads out 16 useless bars with featured guests, overly familiar samples and Diddy’s puppet strings. Methinks definitions 1 and 3 speak for themselves, and while number 2 doesn’t add or subtract anything at first glance, I figured I’d leave it in so we could all gain something from this exercise by pondering and possibly researching if Maghrebis (and Morrocans in particular) consider themselves Arab. Okay, I’m sorta lying. I know all this shit already, but do you? If you don’t, I’d like to let you know that’s exactly why those folks hate America. But I digress.
So after breaking the formula for a few years in his solo career (don’t care what you say, Press Play & Last Train To Paris were kinda interesting), Diddy has pretty much decided to go back to pop-rap by numbers – the well that served him so well early on with Mary J. Blige, Ma$e and his solo career. That would be using the easily recognizable sample as a crutch and he found the perfect “collaborator” in the form of French Montana. After all, the man’s breakout single, “Shot Caller,” pretty much repurposed the horns we’d long associated with Lords of the Underground’s “Funky Child.” But Harry Fraud did more than enough to give that song its own identity and French threw a shoutout in LOTU’s direction. Besides, Guru once said “rap is an art, you can’t own no loops / it’s how you hook em up and the rhyme style, troop…”
However, this “Freaks” shit is just as cynical and irresistible as “Pop That” was. And we’ll be hearing it into late summer, so if you think it’s trash – which I totally understand – go ahead and get used to it. My reservations notwithstanding, I’d actually like to hear more islandy Nicki in the future. After all, she’s built like that and she’s good at it. So there’s that. On the other hand, I can’t wait till I’m 50 (if I live that long, life expectancy ain’t all that great within my demo) and kids are sampling Future’s classics for their singles. For now, I’ll settle for seeing at least ONE Arab or Persian girl properly twerk to this shit in my presence…
Download:
MP3: French Montana ft. Nicki Minaj – “Freaks” (Left-Click)
