Art via Evan Solano
Ant shall bring disaster to evil factors.
Every piece of Playboi Carti content (demos, scrapped videos, unreleased fit pics) is a charmed artifact to be gobbled by his dedicated subjects. Even when doubling back to the well that made “LIKE WEEZY” a summertime smash, “Let’s Do It” hits the sweet spot between nostalgia baiting and tasteful curation without burning the source. The video builds on the blinking chaos of all the other MUSIC visuals with Carti and an entourage of your favorite rappers rolling from studio to parking lot in a tornado of weed smoke. Carti eats up most of the airtime until teen club icon Skooly pops up for his biggest moment since Datpiff went under, with Baby slick talking with the cockyness of a durag’d Hov on the backend. But there’s one big thing out of whack; this isn’t another Carti single, it’s a Lil Baby single.
The “*insert rapper here* fall off needs to be studied” genre of online discourse has gotten their licks off on Lil Baby for years, but today he’s vindicated them with high levels of desperation; blatantly riding the wave of whoever is the biggest guy at the moment, going so far as to copy their distinct visual fingerprint, plus there’s that pesky “Metro Boomin in a blunt” bar that feels like red meat to feed IG aggregators.
Baby’s strong suit has always been waterfall flowing anecdotes of a knucklehead Atlanta go-getter, which he hits on perfectly here, but the baggage of doing it in Carti’s cosplay is another miscalculation amongst a sea of sloppy choices since his halcyon COVID days. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I’ve always bought into the Questlove theory that every generation of rap is defined by whatever was the most popular street drug at the time; the late ’80s would be nothing without crack’s frenzied paranoia, the mid-90s were fogged out in kush smoke, the late-90s into early 00s were an ecstasy free for all, the mid-2010s lock jawed molly phase, etc. etc. Whether xav and Che partake in the modern synthetic opioid crisis or not, they’re clearly partaking in the finest social media brainrot which may or may not have the same long-term brain smoothing effect.
Abandoning thoughts midstream, overwhelmed with the notion of speaking in full sentences, they ebb through liminal department stores, blurred to their atomic forms while waiting for their timelines to refresh and paramores to drop a pin. Unstable, fleeting, but heavenly to all senses, “BLEAU” should only be enjoyed under doctor supervision with Narcan spray at the ready.
The summer after graduating high school I took my first visit to NYC, eventually ignoring every tour guide’s advice and hitting Canal Street looking to find the highest quality Gucci belt a New Jersey sweatshop could produce. In hopes of getting off his wares before NYPD crashes the party, an old man was pacing up and down the famed bazaar, whispering in people’s ears, “Quality Rolex, 40$.” I left beltless and Rollie-less, but struck by the gumption required to even scrape by in the big city. Baby Osamaa is just as fearless as those merchants, flipping their market-tested whisper technique for her own deranged Downtown lullaby, proving she’s one of the most imaginative young rappers in the 5 boroughs.
Danny G beats unlock the inner Lloyd Banks that lies dormant within all quirked up white rappers. Whether it’s for BabyTron, BLP Kosher, or Western Massachusetts’ own mulleted maestro DJ Lucas, Danny’s basslines burp out at the perfect BPM to unlock their observational punchlines and make us reevaluate the mundane. In another life, DJ Lucas is opening up 8 times a week for a Jerry Seinfeld x Mitch Hedberg headliner out in Vegas, but serving weed under the cover of red maple trees while sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 17 randoms will have to do for now.
Theravada isn’t a weed man, he’s the sentient embodiment of weed, man. Every interview watched or written features the rapper-producer-AND1 Mixtape aficionado cozied up with a pearled spliff, the freshest gear, and a Harden-esque beard that has a non-zero chance of stashing, you guessed it, more weed in it. Having more THC than DNA in the body is the only way anyone could unlock the rhythm of asymmetrical chops while calculating which “one of us has got to be bitch made.” It isn’t him, it damn sure ain’t me, and if you lucky listener tap into his fantastic tweed textured The Years We Have project, you can work your way out of the equation and ride shotgun in our Outliers Only hotbox.
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