Art via Evan Solano
Donald Morrison is bringing back foh because “a lot of y’all need to leave. By force.”
To be online these past few weeks in America is to be inundated with videos of extreme violence. Twitter has turned into the snuff film app: a seemingly endless scroll of political assassinations, women being stabbed on city buses and an almost giddy excitement at the idea of the dismembered corpse of a teenage runaway being discovered in the front-trunk of a Tesla registered to d4vd, a young singer-songwriter that fans of this blog are probably only now hearing of in the wake of this incident. This is of course all accompanied by one of the most insufferable discourse cycles I’ve ever witnessed. It’s all enough to make a reasonable person log off for good, to try and save what’s left of their brains for books and videos that are longer than 15 seconds.
DaBaby has been scrolling the same timeline as me. And he’s been thinking: “this is sad. But how can I capitalize off of it?” What he comes up with is one of the dumbest songs of all time, ”SAVE ME,” with an accompanying video that’s a clumsy and transparently exploitative attempt at capitalizing off senseless tragedy after a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman named Iryna Zarutska was fatally stabbed in an unprovoked attack while riding a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 22, 2025. It’s a strategy I mostly associate with political grifters and right-wing nutjobs. The video, which was widely mocked, is basically DaBaby attempting to rewrite history in the way Quentin Tarantino did with the Manson Family murders in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
The result is so half-baked, so devoid of awareness, that one wonders if DaBaby didn’t film it this way on purpose, snickering between scenes, needlessly covering his hands in the blood of the innocent. “When I’m inside her, it’s like water, she gon’ toss me under,” DaBaby says as he sits on a recreation of the bus Zarutska would die in. The lyrics don’t match the video’s messaging at all. There is no message of unity or about how individual tragedy shouldn’t be immediately politicized in this way. It’s instead a shameless attempt to use the moment to gain some eyes on his new music. The video ends with DaBaby grabbing the arm of the killer, ending racism and the violent death of Zarutska in one well-timed movement. We have never been in a stupider time.
Even in these spiritually rotting times, there is unabashed happiness to be found on the streets of New York City, as evidenced by xaviersobased and his crew of post-adolescents roaming the streets, holding bodega kittens, and rapping about about SpongeBob side characters, saying he’ll slime someone out like he’s Gary. The last 50 seconds of the song see the chaotic beat slowly dissipate, leaving only a hushed xaviersobased to fill the void with his voice. It’s one of my favorite moments in rap this week and the song as a whole is a great example of his versatility as an artist, his ability to congeal numerous sounds into less than two frenzied minutes.
This music video art form isn’t as bankrupt as I thought. Much has been said about the great Southeast London artist Jim Legxacy, known for his eclectic montage of rap, lo-fi, emo, Afrobeat, and eclectic samples. His approach to the music video for “I just banged a snus in canana water” is similarly kaleidoscopic. Everything about this video works for me: the graphics, the lo-fi dancing Blackberry phone at the beginning, the head-scratching DJ drops throughout the song. It’s truly an acid trip through London with nothing but Jim Legxacy as your guide.
For 42 Dugg, it always gets deeper. The past two years of his life have been plagued with myriad legal battles, incarceration, prison conditions that lacked humanity, and a renewed focus on music upon his 2023 release. 42 Dugg has always possessed the artistic superpower of succinctly translating singularly painful experiences through his music. There’s a vengeful sadness to his voice, as if he’s always one step away from quitting, yet something keeps him going. “It Get Deeper Pt. 3” is one of the best songs he’s released in years. It features vocals from the legendary Doughboy Clay, and some of 42 Dugg’s most thoughtfully written raps in ages.
“Start Dissin’” is the most fun I’ve seen rappers have on an LA posse cut in who knows how long. The music video features women at a backyard party riding mechanical bull, except instead of a bull it’s a yellow couch. It’s hard to explain. The one-two knockout punch of BabyTron and AZ Chike at the end of the track is worth staying for. AZ Chike, specifically, steals the show, sounding hungrier than ever as the beat builds around him. “Told dog, you ain’t Ray Charles, you gotta see me,” he says.
We rely on your support to keep POW alive. Please take a second to donate on Patreon!
