Rio going the ‘single’ route for presumably the first single off City on My Back. Was wondering what it would sound like if Rio tried to make something a little more poppy, and first results are not bad at all, he still wields that trademark Rio grit and the ridiculously grimey bars but makes it catchy. This reminds me of during Gucci’s rise to the top when Gucci started making stuff that was at home in the streets but that you also would start hearing unexpectedly at a bar/club/party and felt equally at home there.
This beat is fire and the hook is growing on me more each time I play this. We’ve even got Rio breaking out a much-deserved dance move at around 1:11 – when you’ve been torching every track like this for like 6 months now how could you not be feeling yourself?
“Baby you can’t get no money from me don’t make that face. Power-braked the Scat on 8 mile in front of Ace of Spades. Damn, I need another tire. Knocked a nigga’s brains out it look like jambalaya. I threw some water on his shirt he had a fucking wire. Bought a zip of soft for $800 and let my uncle try it.”
I started listening to LBM Lil Joe after Crimedawgbylaw posted ‘Labeled a Dealer’recently (and he’s right, it really is a luscious beat from RichieWitDaHitz) and have been playing the whole album on repeat all week and am really enjoying it. I didn’t look at the tracklist or anything ahead of my time and was listening in the car so it was to my pleasant surprise when ‘BackEnd’ came on and I was like ‘Wait a minute I know that voice, is that BIG WAN?!”
“A nigga diss Big Wan? I ain’t diss him back, grab the axe, bullets rip through wood I’m a lumberjack.”
I love at the end when they trade bars back and forth like a Rio and RMC Mike song.
P.S. Crimedawgbylaw alerted me to the fact that Big Wan is locked up right now let’s all keep our fingers crossed that he’ll be home soon, dude is too talented at 18 to get derailed off the tracks at such a young age
Big Wan ft. Goowap – Breaking All the Rules (Bonus)
Big Wan is breaking all the rules. I kind of love the fact that Big Wan had the audacity to call this a ‘bonus track’ on a 13-minute mixtape that would have been 11 minutes without it.
The big homie Crimedawgbylaw put me onto Big Wan and sent me over the Dog Slayers mixtape that he bought at a streetwear shop in Milwaukee (and in a move Big Wan himself would probably be proud of, they tried to charge him an extra $5 over the top for it), and now it’s also on Spotify and Youtube for the world to enjoy.
Big Wan had me at’Fast Lane Lifestyle‘ but ‘Breaking All the Rules’ further sealed the deal. While Fast Lane Lifestyle was more of a bleak, cold tour de force through the Milwaukee winter, ‘Breaking All the Rules’ is a more laid-back, summery vibe where Melodroppin 30 switches it up from his usual signature sound (at some point someone has to make a Melodroppin 30 compilation with some of his best production, I’m going to take a stab at it soon but others out there will have more knowledge of him than me) and almost gets a little tropical on us with the beat. I’m breaking out my Hawaiian shirt with the coconut buttons and hula dancer print for this one. But don’t let the beachy production fool you; Big Wan is flowing like a demon on this.
Not sure if this is a Melodroppin30 beat or someone else but between the beat and Chicken P throwing out bar after bar this slams hard as fuck. This whole ‘Billy’ tape is hard and this is another highlight its between this and Fast Cash Baby for my favorite.
Lil Chicken aka Big Chicken aka Chicken P is in his zone here –
“I trap like it’s July when it’s February/I be stretching canines like a veterinary/smoked a whole quarter pound it was necessary/me and bro making plays just like Tyler Perry/never seen this many junkies man it’s getting scary/in the trap paranoid get my culinary on/4 4s slamming I put fiends in every phone/pourin’ up 6’s like they let Larry home”
“Name ring bells through the city we them one niggas, all work no play ain’t no fun with us”
“Nigga laughed and said I had a purse like I ain’t got a gun in it”
“Scared to go to jail cause I be running into plugs in there”
I’ve been on a big Milwaukee kick lately thanks to Crimedawgbylaw. I was listening to a lot ofLil Chicken a couple years ago and at first I wasn’t into the new direction he was going in with more singing then rapping and evolving from Lil Chicken to Chicken P but it slowly grew on me and now I’m loving it. This song ‘Fast Cash Baby’ from his latest project ‘Billy’ is so fire. I’m loving the flow here – Lil Chicken/Big Chicken/Chicken P is sounding like a disembodied, self-promotional ghost here floating around in the ether imploring the fiends to come shop with him – ‘Come shop this shit cheeeee-eeeep’ (I love the idea of Chicken P standing outside a mattress store or a hood cell phone store singing this)
You don’t work you don’t eeeeee-eeaat
Dope production from Melodroppin30 as always I feel like this guy is one of the most underrated producers in the game at this point
Peezy is out here living his best life right now. Seriously this guy is like a fine wine just getting better and better with time (Pause! Pause!). Peezy has emerged from being a consistent, reliable performer in the Detroit scene to now making a strong case for being at the very top of it (although I’m also partial to be FMB DZ but they’re almost a 1a and 1b to me at this point). I saw the homie Ray Garraty post Duckin’ Wreck the other day and couldn’t wait to check it out. I usually post my favorite line or two from every song but in this case the entire verse just went so hard that I couldn’t even pick out one line and wanted to post the whole thing…
“We ain’t ducking wreck we want all the smoke; in a Hellcat fresher than a bar of soap. Sippin’ syrup out the pint like I caught a cold, catch a nigga down bad he thought he saw a ghost. Heard he said he was a shooter and he keep a stick, still livin’ with his mama, drivin’ a piece of shit. Get your head knocked off you ever make the list, you ain’t fuckin’ with my son, boy get off my dick. Bentley trucks and G-Wagons riding down Ocean, rose gold dog tag off the diamond choker. Never played in no Finals but I’m buying trophies, I’m talking chains full of diamonds with the matching Rollies. Balling on these little niggas I was made to flex, you can’t do it like me you better save your checks. Knockin’ niggas off the board like I’m playing chesss, Team East, Ghetto Boys, nigga fuck the rest.”
I previously wrote about Peezy being an underrated hook-smith and that definitely holds true here. The urgent, intense beat is perfect for this song too. Cash Kidd makes a nice contribution here with his usual sense of humor and aggressive flow. “Niggas out here trying to act tough for no reason, probation for a gun, still strapped, Lord Jesus!” It wouldn’t be bad to get a whole collaboration project from the two of them, as they’ve had a couple of good songs together now.
At some point I’m going to have to post a list/mix of top 25 Peezy songs when I stop being lazy and actually work on it.
On a side note, as someone who drives a piece of garbage for a car, I usually don’t feel great when rappers call people out for driving cheap cars, but in this case I can definitley feel where Peezy is coming from when he says “Heard he said he was a shooter and he keep a stick, still livin at his mama’s house driving a piece of shit” as the guy across the street from me still lives with his mom and parks his garbage car in front of my house every day even though there’s a whole plethora of spots outside of his parent’s house. Although in fairness I don’t think he calls himself a shooter like whoever Peezy is talking about.
Allstar JR ft. Steven B the Great – Felony Warrant
Monster verse by Allstar JR out of Detroit over a nice raw instrumental; this song comes out firing. I love these types of beats.
“Look how the feds gettin my dog boxed with them, took them to a bench trial, they gave him 20, now he looking for a pen pal, called home all he said was this shit wild. All my niggas got fed cases, single parents raised them to be some headcases.”
“Remember I was riding in stolies, free Bud he a savage he would shoot at the police.” (And of course its ‘po-lice’ in that midwest accent so it rhymes with stolies).
I like the cartoonishly over the top ‘Skrrt skrrt’ adlibs someone screeches out while the Hellcat is doing donuts in the parking lot.
Also, I’m probably too broke to credibly pull it off but I’m also feeling the satin Richie Rich jacket he’s rocking
The Martorialist, perhaps the chief purveyor of Kansas City’s underappreciated rap scene, got me on a Rich the Factor binge with his recent post on ‘Aristocrat‘ and I’ve been avidly surfing in this Kansas City whale’s wake ever since, delving into his previous work. My favorite song by him thus far is ‘1000’ on his last mixtape, appropriately also entitled ‘1000’. Over a really simple but enjoyable beat, Rich takes us back to the 90s with a flow and bars that seem like they could be preserved in time from the golden era of mafioso rap, and does it exceedingly well. There just aren’t too many guys that rap like this anymore. I also love his laid back flow and voice which makes it sound like he’s such a boss that he’s never had to rush himself for anyone in his entire life. Some great bars in this one from the aristocrat himself..
“We gonna eat with our hands or a fat plate, and I’m good in the jungle like a black ape”
Rich is always on the lookout for snakes in the grass and cuts them down quick, I’m just picturing him riding around a lavish suburban lawn at 5 MPH on a pimped-out looking John Deere…
“Backstabber and a rat and the back door, I’m the Midwest whale on a lawnmower. Grass cut got it looking like it’s Arrowhead, it’s a cannon you can tell by the barrelhead.”
Rich takes the unlikely whale/lawnmower combination to the next level by not only rapping about them but also coming up with these dope whale/lawnmower t-shirts. I see these teenage rappers out here rocking these tight designer shirts where you’re not even sure if it’s for a man or a woman, but give me one of Rich’s whale t shirts, a pair of sweatpants and some clean white Air Force 1’s over that nonsense any day of the week and I’ll be a happy camper. You’ve got to respect a man who just embodies a brand and goes for it all out.
You’ve also got to love the KC-specific Arrowhead reference. With the Chiefs at 2-0, is it unreasonable for this blogger to dream of Andy Reid charging out of the tunnel (actually can Andy Reid really charge anywhere?), looking like the Kool Aid Man in his red short-sleeved windbreaker, leading the boys out onto the field to this top-notch mob music in the AFC championship game? Then after the big win Kareem Hunt and Eric Berry dump the Gatorade out on Andy Reid to celebrate as ‘Aristocrat’ comes on over the Jumbotron speakers, but instead of Gatorade, it’s Whale Water. A newly minted fan of older Kansas City rappers can dream, can’t he?
Over a month after Rap Music Hysteria’s primer on Milwaukee rap got me infected on the Lil Chicken fever (which sounds like it could be an actual unpalatable avian disease) I’m still feeling it. I’ve taken a brief foray into the world of Berner and taken a break to check out the new A-Wax and Meek Mill albums but Lil Chicken is still holding steady as the top dog on my summer soundtrack.
Perhaps a bit confusingly, in ‘Pitty Pat’ Lil Chicken hails himself as ‘Big Chicken’ numerous times to start this video, as the camera pans to show his Milwaukee neighborhood and then he and his compadre Max studiously counting up bills in their traphouse. I see you with that warm A&W root beer 2 liter on the table Chicken, not a bad choice. Lil Chicken certainly gets an early nod for most inventive chorus of 2017 in this one, “Me and Max posted up in the stash house playing Pitty Pat, I feel like Chris Brown all these junkies hollering gimme that. Spanish ho like Dora that b*tch pulled up with a mac, said he want 44 watch me pull up with them racks.”
My other favorite line was “I’ve got it all on me riding round in the foreign, Ballys on, white folks staring at me, make me feel important”
Big Chicken P is combining an aggressive flow with some of the best lyricism coming out right now and he also has the personality and charsima, that certain unqauntifiable quality that you need to have ‘star power’. The stark, aggressive beat is by Melo aka Melodroppin30 who seems to have a great chemistry with Chicken on numerous songs together (No Grease, Big Chicken P, Pitty Pat, etc.).
Let’s hope we get a Lil Chicken mixtape to round out the summer because he’s at the top of his game right now
