“You should approach [Passionweiss.com] as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
― William Faulkner
catch Haley Potiker in the Stones Throw doc on Netflix
1. Miles Meraki – “Gram La Familia” prod. by Jaylen!
One of my favorite things about rap music is the casual misogyny. I adore an 18-year-old who isn’t afraid to tell it like it really is. Here are a couple of annotated lines from “Gram La Familia,” because I believe there is a Rap Genius™ in all of us.
“New bitch came with a bow tied
New watch came with a boat ride”
–Aren’t you sick of hitting on girls at bars? Isn’t it infuriating to have to do all the work while women get to just sit there, talking to their friends, trying to enjoy personal space? Wouldn’t it be nice if women were presented wrapped in Christmas ribbon? I bet they will be after you drop 10 Gs on a Rolex Yacht-Master II.
“Man I’m smokin good I take the back route
Take your bitch and blow her back out”
–This is a good line because Miles Meraki is using wordplay to compare fucking your girlfriend and then tossing her onto the street to inhaling and then exhaling marijuana. Because of the language, Miles creates a double entendre where he will also be sending your girlfriend to chiropractic therapy for a while. Your insurance won’t cover it.
2. Cal Rips – “Riskkk” prod. by Eric The Rager
Aside from being my favorite song on this week’s playlist, “Riskkk” immediately stood out because of the triple “k” in its track title. It turns out Cal Rips and a group of his DMV friends and collaborators (though sadly not former Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr.) have repurposed the sinister acronym “KKK” to stand instead for “Kool Klux Klan.” This group has existed quietly for years, I’m just late to the party. Exactly 95 other people follow their Soundcloud account, and each and every one of those 95 haunts me.
Something I’ve learned about online marketing from my record label desk job: SEO (a benign three letter acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization) can be a very important factor in picking an artist name. To illustrate, you would never name your band “San Diego Police Department,” because your fans would go to Google you only to run scared like “THIS ISN’T MY WEED I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS IS.”
In the case of the Kool Klux Klan, the old-fashioned KKK ends up in their search results. That’s what I’m saying.
Another fortunate thing about spending 9 hours daily at a desk is I found fellow Kool Klux Klan member SiR E.U’s “Nikeboy,” which I now listen to every time I buy a painting, which is often.
3. Sap – “Sunny In Orlando” prod. by Sap
It may be sunny, but the city of Orlando would encourage you to wear hockey gear while visiting.
4. King Rosé – “SZA”
King Rosé is named after one of the three least threatening alcoholic beverages, but it sounds like he wants his girl to get a tattoo on her ass in order to assert his ownership. Which is really more of a canned beer thing, am I right?
In all seriousness though, King Rosé may want to employ a different tactic for marking his bitches. In the livestock industry, for example, many cattle farmers are choosing to ear tag or microchip their chattel animals in order to spare them the unnecessary and inhumane process of marking with a fire-heated iron brand.
For clarification: I realize there is a major difference between the two scenarios. Branding definitely hurts more than getting a tattoo.
5. Brown – “Reflections feat. Sean Michael”
If there’s one thing to take away here, it’s that all over the country police beat the shit out of black and brown people for little to no reason and then start GoFundMe accounts where racist white people can give them money just for the hell of it.
6. John Forte – DAWN
“Dawn” is presented as “an ode to Sigma Alpha Epsilon” and was posted on Soundcloud with lyrics to prevent misinterpretation. The beginning of the track is a recording of fuckboy frat guys chanting the SAE chant that’s been all over the news lately. You know, the one where the 19-year-olds say “There will never be a nigger at SAE”. The second half is a spoken word poem from John Forte.
In order to claim back the cruel acronym, my college friends and I used to jokingly refer to SAE as “Same Assholes Everywhere.” When feeling less adorable, we’d also dubbed their house “that place where Mary and Rebecca and Emma and Madison and Anne and Katie and Olivia and the other Katie got raped.” But by senior year that ever-changing nickname got to be too much of a mouthful.
7. Soft Glas – Breath Trail
Because aren’t you in the mood for this now?
