It’s Sunday so not to sound like a televangelist but I’m about to dress like an old-timey, fast-talking frontier town preacher (a la Sauce in the artwork for this single) and hit y’all with a little with a little gospel, the Ghetto Gospel that is. This is Sauce Walka at his downright, well, sauciest. Spitting some real knowledge/life experience over a shimmery beat apparently from Kingdom Hearts (and French Montana). I can’t blame him for having his mind on boudan; and all this talk of boudan has got me feeling like Kevin Belton. It’s too early to say but definitley could be in the mix for a song of the year contender for me.
Just wanted to say RIP to C Struggs. I feel bad he died he always seemed like a genuine dude to me and someone who had some real substance to their music. Someone who had been through a lot of storms in life but was still standing and pursuing their dream. He also definitely wasn’t chasing trends or changing his style to try to get more popular, he made real music just telling his own story and in a style that listeners of a certain age will appreciate. It’s sad he died of cancer because I know from IG that he was putting a lot of effort into getting into better health by eating healthier and working out, which I know all too well myself is a hard process to begin and follow through with, and then you get taken out by something like that.
This was one of my favorite songs by him; so many real lines…
“I was 17, tryna win a state ring, niggas gave me hell for tryna do the right thing”
“Born broke as shit, now I run the bands up, still fat as fuck but that don’t stop my grind bruh.”
“My daddy died in 98 that was a bad year, but that was the same year my life got a little clear, I met God, got out the streets, started doing shit right, fast forward 8 years I be back earning stripes”
While I wouldn’t have gone as far as to call myself a Drake ‘hater’, I think the old, healthier but less enlightened me would have perhaps best been described at the very least as a ‘Drake skeptic’ or a ‘Drake nonbeliever’. I wasn’t that into his early stuff when he first started blowing up and later on I really couldn’t stand most of his hits over the last few years like Controlla and One Dance. More than anything I kind of just considered him to be bland elevator music. But I’ll be the first to admit, and as someone whose been critical, I feel responsibility to give credit where credit is due; I’ll be damned if Drake’s last couple of songs haven’t been absolute bangers. He’s had a good 3-4 songs or more in a row (this one with Lil Baby, his song with Trouble on the ‘Edgewood’ album, ‘Look Alive’ with Blocboy JB, and I’ll admit I was even down with Nice for What even though that was definitely shamelessly pandering to the ladies. I also didn’t mind God’s Plan.) that have forced me to mention them with the same disclaimer every time, ‘I’m not a big Drake fan but…,’ so I don’t know if he’s actually getting better or if I’m just going soft in my old age but I’m slowly…becoming a fan??? That was hard to type!
The man has a pretty unassailable ear for great beats, and if he retired from rapping he would make a great A&R he has an eye for up and coming talent. He has a penchant for working with hard, down south rappers like Blocboy, Trouble, and now Lil Baby. Drake is like the 2018 version of 2017 Berner to me.
Enough about Drake though, Lil Baby is the real show here. His verse/flow is crazy. He’s another artist I was kind of tepid on at first, not that I disliked him but just none of his songs really jumped out at me, but I loved this song, and ‘I Remember’ with Quando Rondo, and ‘Day in my Hood’ with Sherwood Marty were pretty solid jams so I’m starting to become more and more of a fan; I’ve also warmed to his hits like ‘A-Town’ and ‘My Dawg’. ‘Trap Star’ off of his last project before the one coming out today is a legit slap too. I just checked out all 4 of his previous projects in preparation of checking out his new album ‘Harder than Ever’ which came out today which I’m looking forward to delving into today and over the course of the weekend.
Drake is doing his best Hoodrich Pablo Juan impression on this one. Side note on the Drake verse – he says ‘my shorty a goodie’; most of my friends have been calling bad bitches baddies have they been doing this all wrong? My favorite part is where Lil Baby sings, ‘Waaah waahhh waaahhh bitch I’m the Baby’.
Another side note – apparently on the album this song is called ‘Yes Indeed’ but when it dropped on Youtube they were calling it Pikachu and I’m still calling it that.
YELLOW FERARRI LIKE PIKACHU, CARTIER LENSES I WON’T EVEN PEEK AT YOU
This came out so dope with that heavenly Stan Getz sax sample and the way H-Town’s DJ Mr Rogers cut it up. I played the part in the middle where he’s working on the beat over and over again, it was so relaxing and hypnotic to watch/listen to. The ’25 Lighters’ and ‘I Get Money’ snippets he added in were nice touches too. Would love to see this turn into an actual song on an official release from Le$. Mr. Rogers really worked his magic on this one.
20 years later and The Leprechaun has still got it!
It takes a minute or so to get going but once Lil Flip hits his stride he burns down this freestyle over the G-Eazy ‘No Limit’ beat, which is awesome, because the beat isn’t bad but I can’t stand the actual song or most of the artists on it. Just replace them all with Lil Flip and the chorus to Bay Bay marching in place yelling ‘Rock with us and get some money’ like in the video. Side note – I love how hyped up BayBay gets for this freestyle, and his antics that go along with it like acting like he’s riding a motorcycle or sprinting like a track star.
“I be in these Texas streets. Last night, threw 500 at XTC!”
“I still do this for Pimp and Fat Pat, free Twisted Black, and I’m still here, in a white Wraith looking like veneers, cheers, I used to shop at Sears, now I appear in movies like Richard Gere. One million wasn’t enough I had to get 3. I tell ’em smoke something B, that’s for Pimp C, I’m an underground king like Bun B, 25 choppers if you jump me.”
“The Wraith paid off, the Bentley truck next, you ain’t nothing man you know we rep Tex. Man this is H-Town, the real H-Town, if rap don’t work we got bricks on the Greyhound. 25 lighters on my dresser, yessir, you ain’t smoking gas like a Tesla. This a freestyle dog I ain’t write this. If you gon pimp dog, you better get a white chick.” (The real H-Town line was my favorite of the song but I couldn’t pass up the Sears/Richard Gere line as the title of this post just because of how ridiculous it is).
I love the look on Bay Bay’s face when Flip says ‘Shoot you and then give it to Bay Bay now that’s a flea flicker’ he looks like he’s excited but then he’s like ‘Oh wait a minute I don’t want to be holding this’ lmao. “Wooooo!”
I also like all the Texas/Houston pride here from the shoutouts to departed Texas legends like Pimp C and Fat Pat and imprisoned ones like Twisted Black, to naming restaurants like Ojos Locos and local streets in Dallas plus of course about a half dozen Houston and Dallas strip clubs, of course. The Houston Rockets t shirt is sick too.
I love all these OG’s in the game dropping stuff lately to show that they’re still a force to be reckoned with. The mix of Flip’s great voice and clever punch lines mixed with his high level of Texas/Houston pride and local references makes this a dope and memorable addition to the canon.
Your humble host has been too dormant for the last week or so but now I’m back out here in the trenches with y’all. I’ve noticed that unintentionally, I’ve been listening to a whole bunch of releases by Memphis artists in a row over the last week or two, in between some Tupac while I was in nostalgia mode after my birthday and randomly New Edition’s ‘Gold’ greatest hits collection (I can feel my street cred instantly plummeting as I type this) so I wanted to put up a post rounding up some of my favorites from some of the new stuff going on down there with some quick-hitting thoughts on each. Between all the love Blocboy JB is getting, the new Moneybagg Yo project that just dropped, and new mixtapes from both Key Glock and Jay Fizzle, Memphis is on fire right now – they’ve got me feeling like a Memphis Grizzly right now. A hibernating Memphis grizzly, but a grizzly nonetheless.
Moneybagg Yo – Black Heart
The intro to Moneybagg Yo’s new project ‘2 Heartless’ goes hard as a mother. It’s under a minute and a half long but it packs quite a punch. I wish it was a full-length 3 or so minute song because it ends right as he’s really heating up. The beat is harsh and I’m always down with rappers starting mixtapes with clips about themselves/their crimes/shootings etc. from the radio/news. I’m also down with Moneybagg including a clip of a guy yelling ‘Man, fuck Moneybagg!’ on his own tape. “Niggas turned hippie, they want peace, hit ’em with the iron get ’em creased, hottest nigga moving through these streets, all in my shows with the heat, dealt with more crosses than a priest, I ain’t let it break me with the lease.” The ‘niggas turned hippie they want peace, hit ’em with the iron get em creased’ is one of my favorite rhymes in a while it’s so simple but so effective. The hippie line has me picturing Moneybagg Yo’s opps in Memphis walking around with bell bottoms and tie-dyed shirts and something about hit ’em with the iron get ’em creased just sounds so brutal. I love the way he says ‘iron’ with that Tennessee drawl; ‘eearun‘.
“Killas in the motherfucking circle… I bang the C, half a circle”. Blocboy JB has got me feeling GRAPEY with this one.
Something tells me that this is one Santa Clause that you don’t want to end up on the naughty list of.
I first heard Blocboy JB on Somanyshrimp’s end of year top 50 list with ‘Shoot’ which was a great song in its own right, and ever since then I seemingly can’t get away from him, with the dance from Shoot blowing up and now his followup Rover which is an absolute monster.
The Memphis rapper goes hard as fuck on Rover and people are already starting to go nuts about it. A recent cosign from Drake will only push this to higher heights even though it didn’t even really need it to grow into a behemoth in its own right. (I’m not a big Drake fan but I have to say, the man knows good music when he hears it and certainly knows which waves to hitch his wagon to. It looks like they also recently caught a Grizzlies game together, and the Grizzlies are absolutely terrible this year so I’m sure Drake was there more for recruitment/getting his A&R on as opposed to that he was dying to see Mario Chalmers’ NBA return tour).
The dope Tay Keith-produced beat (same guy who produced Shoot) and Blocboy’s menacing flow make this the perfect song to blast in the whip. Even if you’re just driving around in a falling apart 2007 Nissan Sentra like me, this song is the perfect cure for driving a lemon because you can still feel like you’ve got a decent amount of sauce when you pull up at the light bumping ‘Rover’.
Between Blocboy JB and Jay Fizzle, it seems like Grape Street Crip rappers from Memphis are having quite the moment in the sun right now. I also love the fact that in true Grape Street fashion JB’s EP on Spotify is called ‘The Purple M&M’ a la the similarly awesomely titled ‘The Blue M&M’ and ‘Blue M&M King Sized’ by Peewee Longway although regrettably there’s no ridiculous cartoonish purple gang-banging M&M posted up on the cover. Maybe for his next tape! The tape was good but it was short, and since this guy already has two absolute bangers in such a short time I’m definitley looking forward to hearing more.
