Blocboy JB – Rover

“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.