Album Cover via BigXthaPlug/Instagram
Casey Taylor is micro-dosing Aleve throughout the day and evening.
“Came up off of violence, don’t mean I condone it
I’m chillin’, but I keep the Glock if you want it”
There are two competing realities in American rap music. In one version of rap’s storyline, hip-hop celebs released successive diss songs to fans engaged in proxy battles with their own identity. Everyone had a lot of fun pretending that preferring one rapper to another was a testament to their own authenticity. For a period of three months, millions of people got to pretend they were friends with their favorite rappers as those artists settled personal disputes on social media for revenue.
In rap’s other reality, the more interesting debate was about the best rapper in an extremely crowded field of talent emerging from Texas. Right as fall hit, BigXthaPlug got the last word in with Take Care, a combination of new tracks and EP releases that coalesced into a thunderous full-length arrival. BigX may be as big as the admittedly goofy stagename, but the former offensive lineman’s stature and deep voice are no gimmick. The artist born Xavier Landum is Rapping from start to finish, casually firing off heartbreaking allusions to the inevitable atrocities of street life that he navigated up to age 25.
Texas is its own planet. Houston tends to be the first city people think of when hearing the phrase “Texas rap” because of DJ Screw, UGK, Scarface, and now Maxo Kream or Travis Scott. Or, due southwest of Houston, there’s a charming little place called Bay City being put on the map by That Mexican OT’s rapid fire bars about cartel cash and living fast and loose with the law. Mike Dimes showed up seemingly out of nowhere with Texas Boy to put San Antonio on the hip-hop map in the 21st century. But BigX is from Dallas, and Dallas is the center of the universe according to people from Dallas.
BigX is still underground, but the “underground” occupies an odd place in hip-hop since the SoundCloud and DatPiff era. The bulk of BigX’s raps are not going to make it to the radio and it’s not because of profanity. It’s because much like Maxo or That Mexican OT, the Dallas-born hustler does not shy away from dropping both coded and direct references to the subterranean conditions that he grew up in. Gang life existed before BigX, and well before rap, but if any rapper references this thing that the listeners already know exists, the song becomes a commercial non-entity.
It’s all very stupid, but industries are scaled on mass delusion. It is easier to pretend that rap is defined by arguments between its most wealthy elders than to feast your eyes upon the conditions that foment some of the greatest rap music. BigX raps about his children and clarity and regret, but also raps about being trapped in a rat maze that he didn’t build. He raps about being hardened by streets into which Xavier Landum was born.
His writing pulls no punches as BigX hedges every Dallas-sized boast with a reminder that this shit hurts, man. He’s lost friends to gang life, family members to prison, and business partners to the sin of greed. The diamonds fresh from Johnny Dang hang heavy. Getting them wasn’t easy. On Take Care, the listener can hear Landum work out the answers to the question that tortures him: was it really worth it?
The answer is inconclusive for Landum, but for the listener there is nothing but elation while enjoying a perfect rap record from start to finish. The beef that fans have enjoyed this summer – the disses between men who are always a step or two removed from very real violence – comes at a cost. Rap has lost so many prophets in the last decade, from Dolph to Drakeo. BigXthaPlug may rap about the conditions that snatched those minds away from this world, but Take Care is equally about leaving that sorrow behind. The album does not celebrate violence, but it also does not wave it away or dress it up in metaphor such that it loses its teeth. If the violence on the record sounds cool, it is merely the illusion brought on by the coolness of the messenger. The triumph of the work is that BigXthaPlug towers over the conditions, while mincing no words about how his pain is a commodity.
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