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Steven Louis is Webmaster Emeritus at www.thug.com.
G Perico & Steelz – “Toxic Love”
The “G Perico breakup song” is as conceptually disarming as “Justin Tucker hit stick reel” or “Dostoyevsky’s beach read.” The South Central rapper has built a following off G Funk jazz flips and gelid set talk. Imagine doing a control + f search for “dumped” or “heartbroken” across the Innerprize discography before this dropped.
But here’s the thing — Perico and Steelz are just about unassailable as an NBA Jam pick & roll duo. “Toxic Love” hits like two homies successfully wingmanning each other after bad breakups. Steelz is the Vince Vaughn character with his glossy, manicured soul loop getting our protagonist up off the couch and out with the dancers. The slinking bassline fashions a cold-ass intro from “got dumped last night so I went to the club / told baby that I love her and she don’t give a fuck.”
Checking for unanswered messages that might be coiled inside the bottle service, and wondering about the one that got away while the DJ blasts your latest Gangsta Grillz tape. Fellas, who can relate? Perico pulls up to the valet and tips $200, except he gleefully pronounces it “two hayndrid,” which makes it worth so much more. I feel like TWO HAYNDRID converts to $10,000 USD, at least. Would LA Summers 4 curb inflation? “Toxic Love” puts the single in single and the up in breakup. These guys are so money, but they definitely know it.
SdotFrmdaBlock – “Don’t Kry” (feat. Rich Rabbit)
On “Don’t Kry,” fellow South Centralite SdotFrmdaBlock makes basement confessions devoid of the pride or aggression we might expect to hear. This is a full declaration of lifetime solidity, and it’s delivered with the Kawhi Leonard affect. He’s swearing to his mother about the way he lives and the code he honors — a system he’s involuntarily staked his soul on — and he sounds tired doing it. You can feel how dutiful commitment has tolled and transformed the host body, the matter-of-fact delivery cutting through Projecc’s chamberized wails and liturgical piano roll.
The current incarnation of gangsta blues rap definitely registers with mass audiences, but that connection seems to forge through guts-out vocal delivery (Durk, Rod Wave), larger-than-life outlaw narrative (Youngboy, Kodak Black) or rich and plush sonic packaging (Rylo, Fredo Bang). Sdot and Rich Rabbit’s “Don’t Kry” is gutting for how simple and unaffected it is. “I be pressing all these lines, momma / and I ain’t hard to find, momma / I want them to come slide, momma.” That’s tough to stomach as a promise or a threat or a celebration; it’s a different, quieter kind of wreckage as an acknowledgement of how things go.
Bart Oatmeal – “Potlickin'” (feat. ICECOLDBISHOP)
Staying south of the 10, Bart Oatmeal’s re-release of “Politickin’” with ICECOLDBISHOP cooks up a specific wistful nostalgia for a place we’ve never been to. Bishop’s crinkled croon on the hook drops like malt liquor boiling in the sun, or uncles woozily sparring with each other out on the lawn. This is music to free everyone to, raps that make us both laugh out loud and remember our fear of God. The homie shoots like “Pierce Paul,” who I’d like to think is an alternate timeline version of The Truth that stayed in Inglewood and never suffered psychological fallout from watching Bill Simmons eat a chicken wing.
On “Politickin’,” lines in the sand are traced by paisley rags, and the scope hits everything except its moving target. Bart’s bars are compact and sleight but soar after release, like a 6’3” point guard casually becoming airborne outside the key. He raps with a controlled gruffness that sources from the longshore dockers in New Orleans as well as galactic astronauts of the Golden State. Bishop would thrive in a Don Nelson offense. Rolled grains have never been this rewarding.
Compton Av – “Good Girl Bad Girl” (feat. 03 Greedo)
Developing patience for throwaway features is one of the funnier new contours of fandom. For much of this music’s beautiful and complicated history, phoning it in on someone else’s track was beyond the pale. But touring money has been truncated by corporate oligarchy, and if your favorite rapper only gets a few thousand dollars for tens of millions of streams, the money will have to be made back selling 16s and hooks. In a lot of ways, “monthly listeners” is only good for price indexing an artist’s algorithm booster. We are not stretching for Marxism here, but setting up for the big question: why is Greedo going so unholy hard on these features? It seems like we’re getting weekly re-ups of sublime alien vocal stacking and minor key R&B rap supernovas. “Ride With You” with Shordie Shordie is still my top choice this summer, but I know this will make its own push in the weeks to come.
Kent Loon & Wizz Havinn – “Pink 50s”
Elsewhere, Kent Loon hits the money dance from the brackish wetlands. Loon’s new full-length, Swamp Water, is sufficiently phonky, and “Pink 50s” is the high swampwater mark for its mutated and sedated swagger. The beat by Pull Up Lam sounds like a candy paint trolley teetering off its rails, or a samurai warrior on the brink of total eruption. Five-thousand pink fifties for the backend, wrists that exceed the opps’ net worth, and backflips powered by performance-enhancing drugs. Wizz Havinn is the best Florida rookie since Hanley Ramírez. Kent Loon is not Clark Kent, and it’s wild that he has to keep reminding us.
FCG Heem – “Crazy”
Fort Lauderdale’s FCG Heem just dropped another solid project with No Hard Feelings and has a smash with NoCap, but I keep returning to this unassuming mixtape cut. There’s a thrill to finding actually new, unminted sounds in 2024, and “Crazy” has a texture that’s softly haunted me all weekend. It’s cavernous without commanding much space or going cloyingly maximal. It’s a distant heartache that you feel but can’t fully reach, rippling out across spacetime. It sounds like an inverted grandfather clock and a sacred gong chiming together from the depths of a canyon. It’s peripheral with fuzzy edges, like a dream you don’t think you remember but still carry around. It’s perhaps the closest a rapper has come to the Risky Business sonic palette. It’s one of my favorite beats of the year, complimented by Heem’s punctuated delivery and million-mile gaze.
