Image via Punchmade Dev/Instagram
Harley Geffner woke up to the new hellscape that is the YouTube recommended mix algo.
Punchmade Dev – “Credit Card Chain”
There’s not much information online about Punchmade Dev aside from a knockoff Wikipedia page that he clearly wrote himself, but one can decipher pretty easily that he gets money. Every pic on his IG is just him with stacks of cash, one of which is almost half his height.
In “Credit Card Chain,” Dev makes sure you know he’s rich enough to buy every member of his crew, you guessed it, a credit card chain. They look ridiculous, and as he explains, they’re so full of diamonds, you can’t even read them from the glare. Dev raps straight in line with the bell-laden speed-racer beats, and has some funny shouts about growing up in the suburbs and lint being in his opps’ pockets. Simply put, it’s hard as hell.
Boosie x Young Jeezy x Kodak Black – “Rocketman”
Years fly by fast as syllables for these three legends of Southern rap: 20-year bids with no phone calls, lives gone in a second, time with loved ones lost feeling like a distant memory. Time’s fragility is painful and Boosie, Jeezy, and Kodak feel it weighing heavily. So much so that they’re ready to charter a rocket out of here.
“Rocketman” is a painful indictment of the world from the eyes of three people who have really been through some of the worst stuff imaginable. The stories feel biblical. Kodak raps about losing his faith in faith after a backstabbing akin to Cain taking his brother’s life. Jeezy rips open his verse rapping that he’s seen so much he could make the preacher cry, and then shreds his heart to pieces, rapping coldly about the loss of life over the soulful, bluesy backdrop. Aside from an off-color bar about the world being too feminine, Boosie pours his heart into his opening verse too, speaking genuinely about hood fatigue and the necessity of positive thinking amidst brutal realities.
It’s tear-jerking stuff, and part of what makes these guys’ so powerful is their ability to extrapolate their circumstances outwardly. It’s not just what happens to them – their lives are microcosms of the hefty cultural criticisms they levy with their music. Jeezy asks why we have money for war but can’t feed the poor. Boosie explains how people use their faith to justify acts of violence (“God forgives every sin, so they buss again.”) Jeezy’s booming voice slides in nicely between Kodak and Boosie’s nasally deliveries, and the song just works together on all levels as an emotional rocket ready to shoot us all to another planet to try this shit again.
Sybyr – “True Form”
Sybyr’s sandpaper-scraped deep internet raps have always been his calling card, but his melodic and pop-leaning instincts have poked through his discography over the last almost decade too. When he leans all the way into those instincts though is when his music feels the most shiny. “True Form” is him at his shiniest, singing about the pieces of broken relationships and thinking about healing and change over a bubbly vat of pink cyber-syrup. His melodies are gravelly, but his singing voice is pure. It retains the coded nature of his music with a synthy wall of sound that vibrates at different frequencies throughout, but feels closer to a modern day late-2000s rock radio pop song than anything else.
RX Papi x RX Nephew – “WB Rahlo Flow”
This RX linkup from 2021 just got re-uploaded to YouTube, and it’s 5 minutes of pure stream of conscious shit-talking over two legendary Triple Six Memphis beats. The two deliver a masterclass in work-whipping over the thunderous beats – making, selling, and using drugs in ways nobody has ever dreamed of, moving through too many states to count in their dealings. When it comes to drug dealing raps, the only people who come near Pap and Neph are Los & Nutty, and funny enough, Pap said in a recent IG Live that they’re the only rappers he listens to other than Neph and himself.
Rio da Yung OG – “Talkin Crazy”
There’s no waxing poetic about Rio anymore. Anything worth saying about him until he gets out from prison has already been said, so now his bars speak for themselves:
“Hit your block with a K with the scope, call it sightseeing”
“I don’t think I’m from this planet, I’m an astronaut
I’ll throw my whole career away, bro, pass the Glock”
“I ain’t gon’ lie, I take Percocets ’cause I be cummin’ fast
You tryna spend ten thou’ right now? I’m comin’ fast”
“The pint of red was talkin’ back to me, I drunk his ass”
“Two hundred racks off just rap, it took eight months
Two hundred Blacks back to back, I got great lungs
The way that girl suck d***, she got eight tongues”
Emptying the Chamber
