LOOSE LINX VIII
A loose round up of albums from A$AP Rocky, Altair Kareem, diamond*, Sincere Hunte, and fakemink. Plus a Danny Brown deep dive!
A$AP Rocky - Don’t Be Dumb (🔗🔗🔗)
Purchase the album here
The 8 years between solo albums doesn’t matter. The AAU team of children and aesthetic archive page love story between he and Rihanna doesn’t matter. The eye roll and groan combo that was impossible to stifle whenever the “Don’t Be Dumb; COMING SOON” posts popped up over the last 4 years doesn’t matter. In the end, Don’t Be Dumb itself doesn’t matter that much either.
It’s a solid album, hitting all the signifiers of a great Rocky record; an over advertised and moderately delivered on Harlemite Renaissance Man creativity, stark Three 6 Mafia indebted brutality, southerplayalistic sauce, and a fuck you attitude only the prettiest of mutherfuckers can stand on without turning off the public. Rocky’s legacy has been sealed in amber since Testing arrived as one of the more perplexing experiments any rapper from his peer group put out in the open. He was a fashion icon off his first single, driving up the value of Jeremy Scott ADIDAS, Rick Owens pants, influencing the fashion forward Soundcloud kids that came after him like Carti and Uzi, post-regional rap music in general blah blah blah all the accolades you already know. His “expieremtnal” raps are almost never as far fetched as we’re led to believe. Maybe at this scale “L$D” and “Purity” are Matrix breakers, but you always could just listen to Kanye, right?
After 8 years (leaks slimming down the tracklist be damned) the only new thing he has to talk about is a disgust toward Drake, one that leads to him objectifying his bustling young family into trophy to wave in the disgraced Canadian’s face. Hip-Hop heavyweights have always used women as flexes whether it be the millions of faceless baddies they’ve smashed or alluding to the R&B hitmakers they have fawning for their affection. But there’s an uneasiness that develops in the shift from prideful brags to objectification that I can’t shake.
Given, it’s a Rocky album; you’re not here for the lyrics, you’re here to run through walls or get patched like a Jeff Hamilton jacket to zone out on the sonics. The first 8 joints are classic Rocky cuts crystalized in a way only a matured value of simplicity and slow cooking could produce. Most are tightly bound in their 3rd Coast obsession, repurposing Petey Pablo or becoming a runway for Sauce Walka, each of which could easily be airlifted onto LongLiveA$AP. Even the love song detour with Brent Faiyaz directly (or spiritually) involved (“Stay Here 4 Life” and “Playa”) don’t lose any of the propulsive mosh pit energy Rocky has always pushed as a priority.
It’s not until “STFU” (a song that is in everything but credit an RXKNephew song) do things start getting loose. “Robbery” is a more slippery theater kid rendition of Hov’s jazz standard “22 Two’s”, while “Punk Rocky” and chunks of “Whiskey (Release Me)” are trite Forever 21 psychedelia that doubled my appreciation for how endearing Kanye’s bad singing was, but are all swings I appreciate. I’ve sene far too much Geese propaganda the last year and if Rocky is someone actually talented gateway into guitar based music so be it. If you’re going to take any refreshing ideas out of this album it’s “Robbery,” “Don’t Be Dumb / Trip Baby,” and “The End.” You can even add in “Air Forces” despite it reminding me of Travi$’ “My Eyes.”
In reality this album doesn’t matter for the broader A$AP Rocky career arc. He’s not the musical innovator he/we claim him to be, but he’s more of a cultural influence than maybe we’ll ever understand. Whatever music he releases going forward will just be a springboard for him to do what he does best; creating music videos that make me wonder what the fuck everyone has been wasting their money on the last 25 years.
Best Songs: “Robbery” // “Flackito Jodye”
Danny Brown - The Hybrid (🔗🔗🔗.5) / XXX (🔗🔗🔗🔗🔗) / Black & Brown! (🔗🔗🔗.5) / Old (🔗🔗🔗🔗) / Atrocity Exhibition (🔗🔗🔗🔗🔗) / uknowhatimsayin? (🔗🔗🔗🔗) / Scaring The Hoes (🔗🔗🔗🔗) / Quaranta (🔗🔗🔗) / Stardust (🔗.5)
Purchase his selected catalog here
There are three distinct time periods of Danny Brown’s near 20-year, cultish, omnivoric rap career: Hybrid Danny, Freebase Danny, and Veneer Danny. Each has a defined taste for the outlandish, an itchiness to explore boundaries of black music, and an untrustworthy sense of reality as the allure of drugs teetered between frat boy fun and the psychologically scarring lows of Requiem For A Dream.
Hybrid Danny roamed Detroit halfway houses and paramours’ couches from ‘07-’11, scraping cash for studio time, embodying the pavement pounding hunger of a DJ Green Lantern mixtape freestyle to the point he was a wardrobe change away from being on G-Unit. He still got a Tony Yayo tape out of it, a long running Detroit State Of Mind mixtape series, a Blu mixtape (a fucking relic of the time that goes in ways we weren’t ready for), with the culmination of these sparring sessions bearing out on The Hybrid. It was the first moment all of that blog era block beating seemed to be paying off. Not only was it his best body of work to date, letting his built up technical prowess take center stage, but (per its title) showed the human underneath the laser eyes and frayed wires.
XXX was the beginning of Freebase Danny, a haywire humanoid who still had a stockpile of rappin’ ass rapper tricks. So much so, he began to burn each one as an effigy, calling to the Rapper Spirit Realm (a place I picture lookingAang talking to the past Avatars) to understand what has yet to be done. “Pac Blood” remains one of the best rap performances of that decade, only to be topped in his own catalog by any number of melting zipline stanzas and concussive bursts of hedonistic hellfire from Atrocity Exhibition.
Both albums are foundational texts yet to be properly mined, and probably never will. It was the unpredictable performances of Young Thug before Young Thug, if Young Thug grew up wanting to be Prodigy instead of Lil Wayne. For every melting fun house POV from the peak of a molly high or festival stage, a counterbalance was presented (Old goes harder now somehow than it did in 2013). A debilitating come down always followed, resurfacing suppressed memories, driving him to the dope man one more time. You’d ride with him to rip copper from buildings, witness loved ones distance themselves as he spirals, and follow him down the rabbit hole as he loses all sense of reality in the iciness of isolation. His creative peak was a personal hell, and the video for “Ain’t It Funny” plainly stated his awareness of it.
Come 2017, Veneer Danny appeared. His iconic chipped teeth were shined and replaced with proper ivory walls, his fried bedhead mohawk thing was buzzed down, and his raps followed suit. unkowhatimsayin? was a multi-year odyssey to create, headed by Q-Tip, who gave Danny the task of returning to his Hybrid self (Tip was a fan of “Greatest Rapper Ever” specifically). No gruff barks, no hyper speed squeals, just raw sedated raps, contemplative of the universe, and little anecdotes that made Danny a man. Scaring The Hoes was an outlier in this period, with Danny admittedly being drunk all the time, rambling at full speed as JPEGMAFIA stoked his Freebase styles back to life.
Quarantra was his somber return to solo music after a stint in rehab, cleaning his closet of nearly every foul thought and rock bottom that drove his sobriety. Stardust counterbalanced the amends making and lowkey jazz, packed out with genre-shattering hyperpop, EDM, and indie rock artists. It was NoBells the album, made by a guy #44andtappedin with only vapid self-help speak dribbling out of his pen. Like everything in this Veneer Period, it sounds cooler on paper than what the final product became.
While sobriety wasn’t always maintained during the creation of these later albums, the urge for reckless abandon is tamed down. There’s a battle to surprise the monster within, a challenging reality of every addict’s journey, but with it came a version of himself that was less interesting. The veneers represented a want for maturity, to finally turn the page. Though sobriety alluded him for years after, it was the first step for himself and as a flag for us fans. Yet his insides screamed for him to experiment with artists closer to his old self. Who is Danny Brown without those vocal highs? The shocking swings made songs like “Fields,” “Tell Me What I Don’t Know,” and “Lonely” so potent as a counterbalance.
Even with such a step decline in his later years as a rapper, a more well-rounded songwriter has come to fruition.Securing a placement in a Target ad seems out of reach at this point, but maybe a TikTok craze or a spot in a Nike commercial is on the horizon. It’s the final totem he’s yet to unlock in his career. He’s killed features against Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q, billy woods, Ghostface, and a gang of Detroit luminaries. 2 iconoclastic albums sittingas crown jewels amongst a trophy case comparable to any of his Blog Era peers. The success of Bruiser Brigade (Bruiser Wolf, ZelooperZ, J.U.S., Fat Ray) is only extending his reach.
He’s Redman with more poise and purpose, Kool Keith with less interest in narrative, a new wave and dubstep loving Eminem without a degree from the Dr. Dre Institute of Song Structure. An entity closer to an angel dust smoking comic strip protagonist than a mortal man, despite bearing every facet of the human soul fearlessly for 20 years running.
Best Songs: “Greatest Rapper Ever” // “Ain’t It Funny” // “Down With It”
fakemink - The Boy Who Cried Terrified. (🔗🔗🔗🔗)
Stream the project here
The fakemink experience is a condensed fever dream. I don’t know when “Easter Pink” came out, but it feels like I’ve lived with it forever. There’s this 454 type situation going on where I don’t know if his voice is being pitched up or he really just sounds like that, and even if he does it’s a tone so detached from what you expect a human (much less a rapper) to sound like that the disembodied quality of his music stays in tact. I’m also always dubious of anyone getting this level of traction as an “indie artist” because who knows what kind of industry heavyweight it titling the scales anymore. Yet, this project fucking rips.
EPs are either scattershot flexes of range or a single-minded blitz of perfection, this being the later. It’s fully UK nu-jerk (we still gotta find a way to get kids to actually start jerking to this stuff tho, maybe it’s my algo but I never see any actual dance videos to these joints), lyrically closer to Feng’s 2010s nostalgia party boy rap but production wise diving deep in the fried bluntness of EsDeeKid. There’s also this grey melancholy that lies in all British tinging everything with a “crying in the club” energy I’m always partial too.
Through subtle lyrics and redlining production it becomes hypnotic, the hardest attribute for any project to capture. Whatever dark magic (“it factor,” charisma, freshness, whatever) he’s got his hands on is fully on display.
Best Song: “Young Millionaire”
Altair Kareem - Altair Kareem Is Da President Of Da Souf (🔗🔗🔗)
Purchase and stream the album here
It’s unexplainable how in all the hellscape cringe the last 15 years of Democratic Party candidates pumped into the world on their ineffective campaign trails in hopes of swaying college, black, and LGBTQ+ voters that no small town mayor or low level Congressman promoted themselves via mixtape (Zohran’s biggest flaw as a rapper was being a Das Racist spawn, but for free buses we’ll let em slide). Altair Kareem is doing what they never thought of, with an authenticity and charisma no politician has the capability of wielding. Kareem isn’t going to be the Senator of their native North Carolina (yet) but aiming for a more influential, spiritual office instead; President Of Da Souf.
“#VOTEKAREEM” presents as sturdy a platform as any leader since FDR; give fresh flows to the people, put dollars in the hands of the people, never be a climate denier, and “seal the deal as the first real n***a elected.” Excitement boils over, letting the messy mush mouth moments where the words jumble together a bonus texture, a moment of humanity from someone with dreams of immortality. The project being mainly self-produced shows a can do attitude and self-reliance endearing to Southern constituents, becoming fully relatable with an infectious joy and confidence leaking from every word. Spry, benevolent, considered, and reinforced with a kountry twang; how could you ever ask anyone else to represent you?
Best Songs: “P.I.M.P.” // “O Let Do It”
diamond* - Nø Idøls (🔗🔗🔗.5)
Stream the album here
Nobody is happier to be here than diamond* and his ØWay crew, a merry band of ATL raised Young Thug acolytes recently signed to their idol’s revamped YSL label. diamond* in particular raps like he’s riding a rollercoaster while shooting off punch-ins to his voice notes. Nesting within forgotten Lil Keed flows his spunky mentality becomes impossible to turn away from, colliding hyper specific anecdotes (“I knew as a kid i’d bust down my teeth I was stuffing my mouth up with foil”) and hedonistic punk rap dreams.
There isn’t a drop of thought involved in the best possible way. It’s natural for him to leak these melodies, flow at hyper speed, and squeal out mosh activating battle cries. It helps that every beat converges the peaks of plugg and rage, shaking walls and mesmerizing your soul in one streamlined beam of sound, studied enough to be familiar but bold enough to tweak the formula to 100.
Every year there’s special talents bubbling from the underground, but there’s so many boxes being checked with diamond* (an equally exciting and rambunctious crew to grow with, a distinct identity not too far off from previously successful stars, an imagine and taste for production that fits today and tomorrow at once) it makes everyone else feel destined for the G-League. Atlanta is back in the driver seat, and they’re back whipping it with a reckless abandon.
Best Songs: “bada bing bada bøøm” // “Brainstørm”
Sincere Hunte & Thelonious Martin - Where The Wind Blows (🔗🔗🔗)
Stream the album here
In the words of the great Phonte; “Dope beats, dope rhymes, what more do y’all want?’ A spiritual nephew of Isaiah Rashad, Mavi, and every other vulnerable young poet activated by sample chops, Sincere Hunte gnashes through tracks with a pitbull’s tenacity. The hunger is palpable, sometimes distractingly so, but when you feel you’ve found your purpose you can’t help but chase it full speed. Sincere belongs nowhere else but in your headphones at full blast with the wind pushing you forward.
Best Song: “Shortstop”
Have different scores for these albums? Leave them in the comments and argue away!
Excellent write up, especially the Danny Brown chunk