Evan Gabriel’s solo work is better than his stuff with Velvet Underground.
It’s rare for a trio of individually buzzing rappers to drop a single together that doesn’t feel bloated. Three voices can easily get muddled into monotony and messages can become eschewed. But when the content is clear and skill levels solidified, three voices can create entirely new strands of consciousness.
“Today,” a track featuring Denzel Curry, Boogie, and Allan Kingdom, is the congregation of three coasts. Although their styles and backgrounds admittedly vary, each rapper’s verse blends tactfully into the next. The song’s tension is divided evenly: one road illuminating the industry’s lure of lucrative currency, the other road a soggy trench where forces of stress and death never let up. It’s hard to find a track with three different rappers contributing verses of equal value and similar concerns. If Nico’s sentiment on “These Days” could be reframed for rappers of the Internet age, this is it.
The rapping sounds eased and earnest. It feels like three rappers with different ideas but standing on the same side of the street. Small battles are being fought. These dudes stay high and raise glasses but work hard because rent’s never far away. There’s always something looming around the corner.
Still hot off the XXL Freshmen cover, Denzel Curry is already gearing up to headline his Black Metal Terrorist Tour starting September 17th. Boogie will be riding shotgun as special guest. And if history has any reason to repeat itself, there’s a good chance Kingdom will make some appearances, as he and Curry spent this spring playing sold out shows during 2055: The U.L.T Experience tour.
“It’s just that I’ve been losing, so long,” Nico sang in 1967. Even in the face of repeated losses, there’s always a reason to lift your cup.
