Image via Babyfxce E/Instagram
Steven Louis gets most of the jokes.
Maybe I’m biased here. I was born in 1993, a “90s baby” but only nominally — my mush toddler brain couldn’t really register prime Michael Jordan, and I most certainly did not know the importance of a Skypager. I’m partial to the early 2000s, when I was old enough to like stuff on my own volition, but that era just doesn’t get the nostalgia machine that the 90s has. I think it was damn near skipped over, as folks in my orbit seem more actively nostalgic for the Obama/Red Bull Music Academy era than the Bush/G Unit Radio one. I kinda get it (monoculture got crasser and dumber after 9/11), but I also don’t (Barry Bonds was cooler than Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa combined).
Now here’s A$AP Twelvyy, pulling up in a 2003 Ford Explorer and an XL Reebok Allan Houston jersey. “Eddie Bauer (Spreewell Edition)” is well-rapped and cleanly-paced. There are a few Aughts All-Stars dropped in here, from Tim Duncan to Mike Jones to Byrd Gang, and peak Fabolous would’ve hit Gamebreaker 2 over this beatwork. But this isn’t the cheap stuff. Twelvyy’s pen is sharp and his flow is brusque. He hosts beauty pageants down 8th Ave., lights purple diesel and ducks the indictments. It would’ve been an honor to download this onto my Windows XP.
Elsewhere in Harlem, battle rap canonicals Loaded Lux and Murda Mook take a recent Kendrick Lamar salute and go the distance with it. It makes a lot of sense — Kendrick has made turns as a stoic avant garde, a laureate and now a Nervous Music mad scientist, but he’s always had a battler’s delivery and a penchant for punching. He took a few directives from the URL guidebook to mercy-rule Drake (it was one big “look at him, emotional!,” in a sense), so this duo certainly deserves a rental on the Mustard beat. Lux’s delivery is sticky and sharp in their dexterous first half, while Mook’s paced gruffness is perfect after the beat switch. From Chutes and Ladders to ladder shooting, from cowboys to cable-cutters. For what it’s worth, Drake booked both of these guys to battle on his birthday card back in 2021.
Detroit’s pro basketball team is kinda decent for the first time in at least a half-decade, and ball-knowers are celebrating this pugnacious squad as a return to “Bad Boy Pistons” swag. They scrap, they get in opponents’ faces, and a bunch of them just caught suspensions for fighting on the court Sunday. The basketball intelligencia won’t tell you this, but here’s what actually happened to the team — it discovered Michigan rap and has been emboldened accordingly. Babyfxce E is the latest regional shit-talker to ascend, and he shouts out Pistons rookie Ron Holland for his latest single. The bars are nothing short of hilarious — “how the fuck my cup gone before I start the song?,” “on my way back from the D, almost hit a deer.” Everything’s coming up White Buff in the Mitten.
LaRussell is First-Team All-Earnestness. He celebrates his independence with unmatched buoyancy, and puts on for The Bay (and Vallejo specifically) with mixtape-a-month hustle. His interviews are sincere and his shows are humbly spirited (shoutout everyone rapping without a backtrack, we appreciate you all). He just played NBA All-Star Weekend and can still be booked for a pickleball session. I think he’s old-school without anachronism and free-spirited without corniness. BE HOME BEFORE THE STREET LIGHTS COME ON is his fourth project of 2025, each locked in with a singular producer (Tope, Hit-Boy and two with Mike & Keys). “DVD Burners” is my favorite here, brimming with space jazz but also DJ Fresh-level bass slap. “Trips with Pops molded me as a young’n / blank discs and DVD burners in the dungeon / cutting up the paper make you cry, this an onion.” LaRussell raps as if there’s a purpose greater than profit maximization.
A Spitta/Fraud drop with Styles P, Babyface Ray and 03 Greedo? “True Lies” feels like a madlib of personal rap preferences, and everyone delivers. First, the hairy frog — few can capture, warp and compress gangster melancholy like the veteran Manhattan producer. Fraud whisks us to the cold gray shores of the East River, with thumping drums that lift toward the skyline. Curren$y continues to be a steadying presence with ice in his veins and clouds around his head. Ray mutters about a glizzy with the croutons and swears he would mack the Mona Lisa if he only had a time machine. Our ghostly delegate from the LOX is a budding gardener and has a courtroom allergy. Greedo hits two bucket-list achievements — a feature with the original Pilot Talker and a fleet of new pink-slipped Aston Martins. He turns up from the Jordan Downs projects and recruits baddies for public indecency. Here’s an A+ interstate ode to never splitting the loot.
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