Image via Bossman Dlow/Instagram
Most airport bookstores don’t carry Will Hagle‘s book, but that’s okay because he leaves free signed copies in airport bathrooms.
We’re two decades removed from the trap music’s glossy, sharp-tongued and coke-fueled ascent to the mainstream. Even Houston’s syrupy heyday feels saccharine compared to the disorienting haze of the lean, pills, and fentanyl era. Young Dolph was one of the last trap traditionalists: pure motivational money-making music for the sake of good-old fashioned fun. We were long overdue for an artist to snap us back into embracing clear-headed, simplistic fundamentals. And then, from the middle of nowhere Florida, Bossman Dlow came along.
The Florida rapper blew up well beyond the panhandle on TikTok earlier this year. A freestyle he recorded on Jacksonville-based series Kreepin Through the Streetz went viral there and Instagram. Lil Baby, Quavo, and Moneybagg Yo all reposted it. The official version of “Get in With Me” then charted multiple times on the Billboard Top 100, debuting at #18 on Hot Rap Songs. The momentum of Bossman Dlow’s social presence led him to a deal with Alamo Records, and has continued to carry him through a sweep of other singles, a strong mixtape called Mr. Beat the Road, and high-profile features and collaborations with Sexxy Red, Glorilla and others.
Bossman Dlow makes classic trap music. He harkens to the past while existing—perhaps inherently, as a TikTok byproduct—in the new modernity of auto-tune and wider soundscapes. There’s little violence or emotion in his songs. His left pocket is full of pink 50s, and his right pocket has so many blues he looks like he plays for the Magic. His voice cuts above the beat and straight on through. He sounds like a non-mudwalking Drakeo.
On a song like “Mr. Pot Scraper,” the second Bossman single to pop both online and off, the Drakeo influence is unavoidable. “Mr. Swang A Door” is not far removed from “Mr. Get Dough.” Bossman self-identifying as a “foreign whip swerver” is not as inventive or descriptive as Drakeo’s “foreign whip crasher,” but the imagery is close. He does later say “the way I’m driving, I just might wreck or something.” Even Bossman calling his music “slippery” is as strangely accurate and unique as Drakeo calling his “nervous.”
Aside from Drakeo, there is also the unavoidable comparison to Kodak. Bossman emphasizes lines with similar melodic flourishes. “Slippery” truly is the best way to describe his flow, the way it glides up, down, and around the beat in imprecise fashion. In his twang, you can hear Florida.
But Bossman’s voice is sharper and more honed in than Drakeo or Kodak or any other more current artists whose styles could be detected, from 42 Dugg to Sleazyworld Go. He doesn’t list any of these younger artists as overt influences, opting instead to cite the also-sensible Jeezy, Yo Gotti, Lil Wayne and Plies.
Bossman Dlow is a young artist attuned to linguistic idiosyncrasy. His flip phone’s doing somersaults and hurdles, yours is like a turtle. On “Talk My Shit,” presumably in another foreign, Bossman says “I’m driving this bitch like I want to kill myself.” Only Bossman could write something like that, punctuate it with the perfect vrooom adlib, and make it sound like the most fun thing in the world.
Like Milwaukee and Detroit, various FL cities outside the Miami metro area have built up a vibrant and unique regional scene that resonates with people living elsewhere on the internet. Bossman Dlow grew up in Port Salerno, a seaside community in Marin County: twice removed from Broward, thrice from Miami-Dade. One of his favorite rappers, Plies, came from Fort Meyers. His breakout came in Jacksonville. He told Billboard that his music “started off in Tallahassee and started swinging its way up north and down south in Florida.” He is the quintessential contemporary hitmaker: a regional standout with IRL appeal.
Bossman makes hustling sound lavish and nostalgic. Anxiety and depression either doesn’t afflict him or hasn’t yet settled into his music the way it has Future’s. Violence isn’t palpable. There are no dark undertones. He’s the happy and defiant self-made boss Florida’s been missing since Ross got old, and the world’s been missing since Memphis lost its latest King. As Bossman says on “Boss Talk,” “This that Paper Route shit, and I don’t even know Dolph.”
