Image via Rx Papi/Instagram
Harley Geffner wants to know if anyone can give him a primer on what’s going on with Joey Bada$$, and who is currently beefing with who.
No, you’re not misreading that. That’s Rx Papi on an Alchemist beat. If you are a true Pap head, you’ve known this was coming. Papi and Alc have always been artists willing to experiment with new flavors and directions, so it didn’t come as a total shock when Pap posted a pic getting off a fit with Alchemist in 2023. What did come as a surprise was that, given how prolific Papi is, no songs with the two surfaced until the last month – more than 2 years later.
There were little hints along the way, like in his 2024 On the Radar interview, when he said that he was working on a full album with Boldy James and Alc. Then there was Papi’s IG Live where he kept rewinding the first 15 seconds of one of these songs over and over again on a loop until he could get more than 100 people in the live to actually play it out. But to the regular viewing public, it’s been crickets since that 2023 pic – until this month, when Pap unceremoniously dropped four of them as loosies on YouTube. Tradition in Papi fandom.
Is Papi the first person to use a line as simple as: “I got Alc on the beat, she got Alc on her breath”? If not, please someone point me in the right direction. On “CarFax,” Papi brings some of his most lethal gas, and Alc gives him plenty of room. The beat sounds like a broken record player in grandma’s attic started playing something leftover from a haunted carnival in 1984, and Pap took a trip up the ladder to explore.
He starts off with a Mobb Deep / Prodigy reference (very apt given Alchemist’s history), rhyming Prodigy with the obligatory “pound on me,” that has him walking in reeking. He’s Ted Bundy at the stove, obviously, and you’ve never seen money while his girl’s been to three countries. All is good and fun until the beat slows to a crawl before launching a pitch shift, which Pap instantly reflects with an admission: “this where shit gets dark.” He continues, rapping about robbing, cutting out tongues like Gotti, fucking over people for crumbs, before he gets to his grand thesis:
“I’m a product of my environment, they said I’d end up dyin’ there
They threw me in the jungle with no clothes, they made a lion there
I seen my daddy dead on the ground, just lyin’ there
Whenever I see the n**** who did that, I’mma fry him there.”
Papi has phenomenal taste in Alc beats. Here, he uses one from “Phone Bill” off Boldy’s The Price Of Tea In China, which samples late 60s Swedish jazz-rock. The guitar riff plays with the space between heaven and Earth, fluttering around in a windy purgatory only seen while doing acid in an Arabian desert; while Papi raps about the life and death decisions and circumstances that characterized him, and the people he’d die for.
Papi has a real Taoist streak in much of his music, and it’s clear as day when he raps about the way things are. Yes, his friend got shot, but that’s the life he signed up for. His fatal flaw, according to Papi, was that he had love for everybody. He was sold a fake dream, but as he puts it: “it was what it was.” Even though he shouldn’t have been so cool with everyone, “you gotta feel what you feel, sip what you sip, spill what you spill.” He clearly has an appreciation for the natural way of the universe, and how things go, accepting horrible fates as living in harmony with the Tao.
“The Matrix” also includes incredible technical rapping. It starts with an icy anecdote: “It’s negative five outside, his heart colder than that.” Then Papi does this thing that he loves, where he dips into a flow pattern with a repeating cap on every bar. Here, as he’s warming up the story of his late friend Fay, he hones in on “like that,” rapping that Fay would play the corner night and day like that, how he got swarmed like that, how he can’t roll, which is why the blunt is burning like that. He flutters so effortlessly between thoughts, feelings, distant memories, and immediate happenings with the blunt, all presented in a concise fact pattern. A reminder that he’s one of the best doing it.
Alchemist loves leaving breadcrumbs, so his whole discography is like unraveling a sacred scroll. The beat for “Fay 6” is the same one that we hear a snippet of on the outro to Curren$y’s “Corvette Rally Stripes,” leaving Papi with something of a legendary instrumental to work with.
With “Fay 6,” Pap continues the story of his late childhood friend over another drumless track. Pap reveals that Fay was there with him from the very beginning, pitching the scene by describing the first pistol he held (“lil pearly thang”), how when people doubted Pap at first, Fay was the one to stand up and say that he belonged, and how Fay instilled Pap with the confidence he carries with him today.
Again, Pap seamlessly weaves between the memories and the present. It’s in and out and immediate – because who has time for reminiscing when you might have to duck and run, and wasted milliseconds could be the difference between life or death? Or losing a sale, which can also be life or death. It’s one of Pap’s superpowers and Alc brings out his best:
“Fay said I’m made for the stage, it’s amazing grace
It’s money on my head, I’m on the stage with it on my waist
Cuz smiling down, I know he proud, told him ‘save some space’
Hook auntie up, seen her ’round the way, she said I saved the day.”
This beat sounds like it was made for Roy Ayers or Bill Withers. It’s a beachy, sunshiney loop, and Pap immediately recognizes that and flips it with a hell of an opening line: “Where I’m from, it gets dark, ain’t no sunny days.” Then he tags back to expand on it: “Black hoodie, black nike boots, bunch of runaways / headshot, it’s either him or me, this the Hunger Games / brodie tired, we can’t go to sleep, we got hunger pains.”
This was going to be an all Papi Rap Up, but just like rap, there are no rules to this. On first watch, I couldn’t tell if this was terrible or incredible. I was weirded out by the first ten seconds of this guy rolling his stomach, and then the hook drags on a little long. But the more you immerse yourself in it, it becomes almost hypnotic, and he hooks into some impressive flows in his verses.
El Nabi is out of East Nashville, and he’s that guy that’s way too woke, on his Black Israelite shit, always talking about Yeshua and doing crazy martial arts stuff. His Instagram was cracking me up, scrolling through his musings, and absolutely wild balance and workout routines – seriously, you need to look at THIS just to understand who we’re working with here. Some of his musings and captions can actually lean beautiful and enlightened, then he’ll also go way past the edge and start writing things like “AS IF ALL AREN’T SPIRITUAL BECAUSE ALL HAS BREATH . EVEN THOSE WHO ARE STILL IN THE MUMMY SLEEPY STATE OF EXISTENCE HAS SPIRIT(BREATH ) AND CONSCIOUSNESS INSIDE OF THEM ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS FIND THE LIGHT SWITCH YOU WH*RE . STOP PRAYING ON THOSE THAT DONT KNOW AND STOP RUNNING FROM THOSE THAT DO 🙃😏.” Anyways, we don’t judge here, because he seems to be living his life in a generally positive way, and most importantly, the raps are heat.
On “Ancient,” he touches on some conscious, fundamentalist stuff about the poisoning of the seeds, the growing of the roots, how we’re rotting through what we’re being fed, yada yada. He points out that the kids are being taught to settle disputes with guns whereas they should be learning martial arts and reaching for light instead of letting themselves be covered by the darkness that surrounds them. Points were being made, even if by the funniest possible messenger. And ultimately, it just sounds dope because he catches some fantastic flows through it all.
We rely on your support to keep POW alive. Please take a second to donate on Patreon!
