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.
Neighborhood Nip killing it on the Funk Flex show a couple of weeks ago. I’m always a sucker for the ‘If I Ruled the World’ beat and this was a great use of it.
“Bullets got blue tips like they Crippin’ nigga, F&N got 30 in it and I’m tripping nigga, refrigerated cupholders when I’m sippin’ nigga, fuck work sell words it was written nigga, see the Staples Center from my kitchen nigga, on the phone with Forbes asking how I did it nigga”.
Something about the imagery of the refrigerated cupholders and seeing the Staples Center from his kitchen is such dope use of imagery and just paints such an evocative picture to me. I’m not sure if he means refrigerated cup holders in his house or in the whip but either way I want them now. Nipsey can’t miss right now!
“$30,000 for the pythons, rocking knee-highs, sipping white wine, listening to ‘In My Lifetime, looking at the city skyline, getting sky high.”
Man, I remember during Dipset’s golden era Juelz and Jimmy constantly (and usually needlessly) comparing themselves to the Taliban, bin Laden, and all sorts of other global megavillains of the time, so it’s only right that we finally have someone from this new day and age coming up with some Kim Jong Un/North Korea references. I used to love those needless Taliban comparisons because I get where they were going i.e. yeah we ride around in pickup trucks with guns like we’re some crazed mujahadins but overall the analogies really served no other purpose but to most likely shock and alienate a huge number of casual fans and also ensure that the song would never appear on a retail/major album.
On a serious note though this freestyle by up and coming upstate NY rapper Benny (aka Benny the Butcher) is amazing. The beat is hard body and it’s only fitting that somebody spits some serious bars over it.
“In prison, it’s 10% physical, the rest mental, the shit I was cooking had me looking through jail windows…Think I made it out the hood since they saw me on BET. I be ’round the way in the store spending EBT. For 2 ounces of soft, the judge give you 3 apiece. You come home with a scar and a GED. You know all of us risk takers, put coke in water just to get caught up in rent payments.”
“I’m going out with my pistol blasting. On my North Korea shit, sending missiles at ya.”
This video just came out yesterday but overall I’m admittedly late to the party on Benny. I only found out about him a couple of days ago and he’s quickly becoming one of my new favorites. I just checked out his tape with mixtape with Green Lantern called ‘Butcher on Steroids’ that apparently came out in November and I’ve been playing it non-stop, along with his dope new mixtape with fellow upstate NY rapper 38 Spesh (Benny is from Buffalo, 38 is from Rochester). The tape with Green Lantern really took me back to another time and place; I was half expecting DJ Clue or DJ Kay Slay to come in out of nowhere and start screaming their name over the beat. I guess he’s part of a crew/label with fellow Buffalo artists Conway and Westside Gunn called Griselda and these guys have all built up quite a bit of a dedicated following of their own and have some sort of deal with Shady Records now (didn’t even know that was still around!) but it’s all new to me so I’m looking forward to diving headfirst into their catalogue.
Man you can really hear and feel the heart, drive, and spirit of Tee Grizzley on his recent freestyle on the Funk Flex show from a week or so back. I had already become a big fan after ‘First Day Out’ and his debut project ‘My Moment’ but this video here really solidifies it to me that I want to see this guy do well and be a star. You just can’t question his grind, resilience and hunger/determination. Some of the lines in this one hit really hard and you just really feel what he’s saying, aside from being great rap lines/great flow/great rhymes, they’re just deep…
“They still praying on my downfall, I know they praying on my downfall, from the yard to the streets Ima stand tall, 500 100’s on me now, show ’em how to ball, 30 on the Rollie just to shine on the Flex show, that ain’t sh*t I’ma make it back off the next show. In my sleep sweating, brother asking me bro what you stressed for, breathing hard, I had a dream like I was back broke”
Since a conversation with a good friend, lifelong Harlem native and fellow long-time Dipset fan at a bar during March Madness about the epic nature of this freestyle is where I got the inspiration for this site and where it got its name from, I feel like it’s only right to start Pink Chardonnay with a brief homage to Cam himself and the verse/video of his that first caught my eye. Can you get any more evocative of the early/mid 2000’s NYC golden era than this? Even before we get into how next level Killa’s verse was, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the sheer audacity and awesomeness of Cam’s imagery, from calmly and confidently showing up for the Rap City freestyle in an off pink Coogi t-shirt and bucket hat to the way he’s casually counting a seemingly endless stack of big bills. It’s such a quintessential example of the cool, effortless, and over the top arrogant swagger that the stars of that era perfected. To me, it just perfectly captures a moment in time in my mind’s eye.
Then there’s the sheer genius of the verse with some of the most brilliant lines I had ever heard at the time (and still have ever heard to this day!) offhandedly rattled off as almost a throwaway. I had a hard time picking out a title for the post about this because so many of the lines would have been worthy choices; “I’m Anfernee I do things the hard way, pardon me, escalade marmalade mama stay… might cop a car today, color pink chardonnay.” Rappers had of course already been bragging about their luxury vehicles for years, but I don’t think I had ever heard anyone describe them as specifically and creatively as Cam here; not just a pink car, but pink chardonnay. Not just an orange Escalade, an Escalade the same color as marmelade. To me this is what separates Cam’ron (and to an extent Dipset as a whole) from many of his peers and really made him ahead of his time in terms of both rapping and even fashion.
Whether it was the way he seemingly overnight transformed people that were laughing at him for wearing pink furs and pink sneakers to people that were copying him and going out dressed head to toe in pink after he made it okay, or the way Dipset in general utilized sped up samples of 80s pop and rock songs as just another playground for them to dominate (while in some cases, the end result was incredible, and in some, it didn’t really stand the test of time, just think about how audacious/ambitious it was constructing a rap song around ‘Oh What a Night’, ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ ‘Any Way You Want it’ or even ‘We Built this City’), I feel like they don’t get the credit for being pioneers that truly presaged what was to come later.
I honestly often wonder why Cam’ron isn’t viewed as having the same ‘legend’ status as someone like a Jay-Z or some of the other biggest names. In my humble opinion he is an infinitely more interesting and unique artist, but that’s a discussion for another day and another article. I think a big part of it is that he was not only ahead of his time but also that a lot of his lines and double entendres went over a lot of people’s heads. Also, of course he had some silly or forgettable lines/songs that fell flat on their face and I think some people hold that against him instead of assessing his entire body of work as a whole. Additionally, casual fans probably just remember him more as a ‘character’ than a legend for his bold fashion choices and for things like his movie ‘Killa Season’, or his colorful interviews on 60 Minutes and the O’Reilly Factor, amongst others, then for what he actually did lyrically, but I’m pretty confident that if any skeptics were to go through his entire portfolio and really give each project a thorough listen with an open mind, they would have to acknowledge that his portfolio and level of skill compares pretty well to any of the legends on rap’s ‘Mount Rushmore’ and should at least put him in the ballpark.
Other highlights of this time capsule include Jim Jones rocking a Kansas City Chiefs Priest Holmes jersey (who in some ways much like could be said of some of Dipset itself, burned really bright for a few years and then unfortunately faded from the limelight all too soon), and showing some rare vulnerability while utilizing an interesting flow (“Uncle Ricky got a month and some change, and it feels like a garbage truck just dumping the pain, all on my shoulders, I’m mourning my soliders, the nights they get chilly the mornings much colder”). Then of course you just have Juelz being Juelz. And then Cam’ron’s aforementioned legendary verse. “Look dog I bought villas/stayed in resorts, scrilla/how you extort Killa? I extort killas.” “I don’t care I put the flame in the fire, Christian, aetheist, you pray to Elijah, don’t pray? Okay. Just pray I don’t snipe ya.” I also love the rags to riches image and perspective of seeing both sides of life that he shows when he says ‘I seen all islands, Cayman’s to Rikers’. Or how about at the end when he just openly mocks his former record label boasting ’10 mil from Def Jam and I ain’t sell a record for them,’ which he somehow delivers with a straight face before he and the rest of the guys in the studio crack up, effectively ending the session. I’m not sure if this was from 2004 or 2005, but either way, I cannot believe that now it’s been well over ten years ago! Time flies and it’s nice to have a moment in time captured like this as a touchstone of a memorable time period to fondly look back on and listen to as we look for a parking spot for our pink Range Rover ;).
