The song that launched a thousand Tweets about who was the first one to discover that Ecko used to be spelled Echo. The anthropological evidence was excavated during a Lazy Sunday browse in a Bushwick boutique disguised as an antique store. The fury of the Beast Coast erupted from pager to pager, until they opted to cool out and buy some weed from Branson, because his sacks are bigger.
I don’t want to take shots at New York rap because it’s cheap and my hometown spent most of the last decade perusing The Recycler for 64 Chevy’s for their video shoots for Extra Authenticity. I grew up on boom-bap just like I grew up on G-Funk. But I don’t know what it says about a city when two of it’s biggest crews are squabbing about who was the first to blatantly borrow. There are plenty of talented rappers in the five boroughs, but the producers are lacking and that usually leads to stasis or nostalgia. A$AP Ty deftly handles the beat here and offers more evidence that he deserves more stock in Helly Hanson. But I would still rather hear him pursue the opium den haze of “Peso,” then try to out-do Pete Rock, two decades too late.
I still like this song a lot, even if it’s appeal is primarily for those who don’t know that Nice and Smooth had the original funky funky style swiped here. Or those who wish that the Funky Style could live forever. Maybe it’s just a good thing that the tradition is being sustained. If that’s the case, Nast and company do it right. Old Cliff Smith comes through with his best verse in a minute, shaking off his Wu Tang Oscar the Grouch motif that he’d been mumbling about for the last five years. Either way, no way is better at calling MC’s trash.To paraphrase Brand Nubian, the devil is in the details. A$AP Mob do stellar work in finding all the old Stussy, replicating the hallway shots, the Shaq references, the out in front of the project shots, the “Why Are We Shooting Pool” shot? It even sounds like there’s a Mobb Deep sample in the first few bars. The song title makes me want to retire the suffix “Mattic,” but on the plus side, Method Man uses the word “panache.” We’re straight in my book.
