The Roachy Balboa tape has been making the rounds and if by now you haven’t downloaded it you need to stop being lazy and check that shit. Dude comes with that freewheeling high pitched delivery that just kind drifts from peaks to cracks as he rides through beats. There are plenty of raps about girls/pussy which I usually get tired of but when he comes with joints like Let Me Breath I can fuck with it, that universal frustration of being smothered. Roachy Balboa is definitely the most consistent of the Roach Gigz mixtapes, not as hype as Bitch I Go, but it’s more focused and the themes are more cohesive. This shit is way more polished that Buckets and Booty Calls.
One joint I didn’t upload but probably should have was Goomba Pimpin, that fucking beat is just this grinding slumper that just creeps along stretching out this dark bass that is barely holding on from becoming just static. I don’t know who produced this shit or who is even doing beats for Roach but he’s getting some heat.
Right now most as far as young talent goes San Francisco has been a ghost town compared to the Eastbay, filled with terrible raps from dudes who think standing on York means you can drop a tape full of generic done to death mob shit. Roach gives me some hope that this city’s youth can still crank out some dope shit.
This song is one of my favorite Hus tracks — the way it starts off so straightforwardly, & almost underwhelming before picking up momentum, then the pause, then it picks up again, “i got a gorgeous face / but tell me whats the use of a gorgeous face when my heart is crying the blues,” building to a manic intensity — ‘in the truck in something stupid dumb disgusting cousin’ etc internal rhymes. Jazz-like in the way it makes an organized structure, the general outline of his verse, feel like it finds its shape naturally, free-flowing. The rap is written as if you’re actually following an internal monologue, the way he says “I don’t know which way to go,” then pauses in his verse, as if he’s not sure which way to go philosophically, or maybe with his life, or how to deal w/ the stresses of the situation hes in.
His style is like this blend of Raekwon’s abstract but dense lyrics, Ghost’s strained holler of a delivery. But most key to his appeal is this subtle touch of ODB-style mania, this uncertainty about where his raps are going to end up on a continuum of controlled skill vs. crazy character, his persona irreverent towards his craft, the muscular effortless way he drops lines like “focus on ya fedi hope ya ready man the cops is comin / slappin on ya stop ya runnin twistin out the box is thumpin / otha niggas kissin and humpin im whippin and dumpin / to ya uncle and ya cousin for bucks im hustlin / in the truck in something stupid dumb disgustin cousin,” while hinting at a chaotic nonsensical undercurrent that gives it energy, threatening to just push him totally over the edge at any moment. Its this tension more than anything else, this feeling that hes a live wire threatening to explode instantaneously, that gives his persona and songs so much power and significance. Theres this feeling of torrential chaos that just surrounds this all, the kind of thing (although obviously many levels of significance removed) that you would get from the sense of Pac’s uncontrolled motion towards death. It’s the same kind of on-edge embrace of the dark side that made Gucci such a magnetic figure the past few years.
I also feel the way individual lines give you such a powerful idea of the kind of person Husalah “is” (meaning Husalah the rap icon, not Husalah the person who records as Husalah the rap icon…although thats an entirely diff blurry line here) Its this artful sense of saying something without being all fucking explicit about what message you’re trying to drop. I know this is like art appreciation 101, but for some reason this kind of shit is still super-underrated by rap fans today who conflate ‘values’ with ‘sounds like UGK.’ Its the way Hus’ craziness feels real & lived in that helps confuse meaning — to what degree is he being ironic when he says his heart is crying the blues (such a heavyhanded cliche in anyone else’s hands!).
“it aint the first time that ive appeared in the physical / my father was a genius characterized as a criminal / my rhymes is subliminal, inspired by my coke dreams / my life seem bright but its as dark as a dope fiends” [gunshot]
note: i posted this on tumblr earlier, but david wanted me to post it here as well. apologies to the three or four people who might be seeing this twice.
how come the human race isn’t progressing as fast as technology has?
yeah we’re gonna be staying on the moon, but there’s still gonna be racists
so in the end, are we really winning?
“the age of information” is basically stunning. obviously for a lot of people, lil b’s lack of filter is an unscalable wall from which they’ve long turned away— and it still very much clouds the sifting process for those of us who choose to wade into the crashing sea that is b’s mind— but it is, of course, what makes him what he is. we’re attracted to b at a base (no d) level because there is no artifice; he’s saying what he feels, in his own warped way, constantly and forever. but rarely, if ever, has his stream of consciousness crystallized the way it does on “the age of information”.
the first verse has a heavy gang starr vibe. it’s of course weird to hear b on a beat so radiant and warm, and he even pitches his voice down a bit to get that lived-in, 90s NY feel. the rhyme scheme here is predictably odd, with b rapping in an ostensibly “normal” fashion, but still with a near complete disregard for meter, and yet he still hits his rhymes in what could be called a flow, as jagged as it may be. b, always the square peg, has wiggled himself slightly into the round hole. he’s rapping about things that are universal to us all with a sort of innocence that has always bubbled under his music, but it’s with that innocence— and fearlessness— that he cuts through bullshit. here, he just cuts to the bone: “i’m on computers/ profusely/ searchin on the internet for answers/ give it to me”; “it’s like i’m married/ i’m watching the bloggers heavily”; “the truth is near me/ i’m hear it and i can feel it/ but are we dumbing down for technology and the cost of living?/ i just forget it, continually smoking heavily/ thinking about the melody/ thinking of what’s ahead of me”. there’s a resignation here, and certainly some level of paranoia (although b does smoke a lot), that i think we all feel, and the verse hits harder because there is the undercurrent of sadness, of probably yearning for an age that people b’s/my age can’t even remember. when he raps “cannabis residue is on my seats from breaking down again” it’s impossible to tell if he’s talking about rolling a blunt or not. but of course there is nothing we can do (“thinking about the melody/thinking of what’s ahead of me”), and in a way it is best to think positively about a rapidly changing world that we all must succumb too. i think that’s what the beat— so soothing and sunny— is echoing.
the second verse is more traditionally based in terms of rapping— in that he’s barely doing it— and it allows him even more freedom to spout these crystal clear, yet cracked, thoughts: “asking google about things i should learn about”; “they took away places/ where it’s only the forest”; “i’m jogging in peace/ i got my ipod slapping these beats”; “i’m on a mission to find peace and precision”; “i’m askin the older people/ how you make it to your status/ they laughin/ cause they see reflection while i’m askin questions”; “and the best gift is to learn math to count your blessings”; “even though we’re in space we still hate ourselves/ the age of information is hell”. this is heavy— and deeply stoned— shit, but the verse verbalizes a weight carried, in varying degrees, by all of us. and what makes it so compelling is that even though b is shooting so straight here, just cutting right through the static, his lucidity is still filtered through this prism of whatever it means to be “based.” the plain white light is a thought that is almost nearly universal, but what comes out— i.e. “they took away the places/ where it’s only the forest”— is something much weirder, and more distinct, than a rainbow.
You should be listening to this but in case you’re slacking here is the link. Out of all the new rappers coming out this year K.R.I.T. is by far the best right now. I’m excited to see what he does next and these days that’s a rare feeling.
