Image via Nickelus F/Instagram
Ant shall bring disaster to evil factors.
Before turning 30, Chief Keef and NBA Youngboy went from lightning rod teen prodigies to grizzled folk hero outlaws. They’re modern day cult leaders, but they mostly stay silent. Music created in solitude supplies an outlet for every emotion. Their restraint lends their ultimate power. It says a lot about their own respect for Mike Will Made-It that the icons chose the lead single for Mike’s forthcoming album, R3SET, to collide.
With catalogs of music built around the pain of surviving systemically inequitous situations, “ROOMS” is a victory lap. Surviving Chiraq-era Chicago, murder capital Baton Rouge, and the gutters of Atlanta to end up millionaires deserves a rare moment in the sun.
Ghais Guevara is reading the room for what it is. Sidestepping puddles of trip-hop and UK garage, trap and defrag rap, money getting and losing racks on tour, Ghais maintains an all-seeing eye over this vampiric world. The Philly philosopher does a 2Pac spit on crowds that beg for him to sit still; there’s too much going on to stay silent.
“Manifest Destiny” is a confrontational stampede that juxtaposes the televised battles of the 1960’s Nigerian Civil War and fake gangsters living through movies. Today with the Sudanese Civil War raging on, the conflict in Palestine, the Ukraine-Russia stalemate, and the Epstein Files building pressure on elites across the US and EU, playing pretend is long over. He’s not the only one who should be ready to put “that plastic grip upon the palm.”
For Twentythree, the Torontonian sleep paralysis demon with Julian Casalbanca’s wardrobe, words are secondary. Somewhere between nu-jerk and the malicious dark matter that birthed RXDVR KLVN’s phonk clouds, his drones hold a word salad that only the Rosetta Stone can translate. The nightmarish tornado of sound is hypnotizing on its own, but reaches a blissful apex with the hook’s calls of “stay awaaaaaake, stay awake.” Something so ghastly, drowning toward the brink of death under a hard drive’s worth of vocal effects, shouldn’t be so beautiful.
Nickelus F, the sage of Richmond, Virginia, has been tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains creeping on his next come up. “Dead Ends” is the product of that plotting, an erratic blast of fat knuckled body blows that’ll reactivate the OG fans who remember running up their minutes voting in for his 106&Park freestyle champion campaign. As nimble today as he was before 4K TV became the standard, he’s lost more tricks up his sleeve than we’ll ever know. What he’s still got in the tuck he swings out with ease. The self-produced sonics tumble and decelerate, Nick nimbly lets syllables drag and squeeze at will, and whether a swift haymaker or rib busting combo is coming at you next is anyone’s guess.
When the aroma of dark roast coffee beans cleanse your palette in the perfume section, that’s Navy Blue’s essence wafting through. When the breeze lifts the bellow of smoke from your apartment window as you burn Valentines’ dinner, that’s Navy Blue saving the day. In service of the world, his poems bring a solace and peace we might not deserve, but are graciously gifted anyway. Everyone say thank you Navy!
We rely on your support to keep POW alive. Please take a second to donate on Patreon!
