Image via Sheff G/Instagram
Harley Geffner wants to know if Project T-Pain is 03 Greedo’s best album?
In a frequently depressing world, small doses of hope and optimism go a long way these days. Apart from anything Brooklyn’s Sheff G is actually saying, “Grind 4,” just sounds hopeful. It’s not a large and bombastic style of hope, like big horns on a song like “Trophies” by the Canadian. It’s more subtle, with soft strings and a beat that eases into your brain’s hope receptors.
Sheff is similarly subtle, flashing a soft smile and quiet confidence, talking about how we’ve got to do more and say less to reach our goals. The video really brings it to the next level, picturing him with a cigar, expensive champagne, and a championship trophy. Appearing throughout the video, kids play the violins and wait for an autograph, further elevating the aspirational nature.
Greedo has always been at his best when he lets his instincts kick in. There are those distinct moments in some of his songs where you can tell he’s really feeling a beat and just starts to warble along with it, playing with his melodies, throwing little variations in just for fun or experimentation purposes. The entire last minute of this song is him just playing around with the hook, and it’s a perfect minute of music. The rest of the song is good too, but Greedo really stands apart from the pack when he gets playful with his melodies like this.
This song sounds like something straight out of a Bond movie. I can picture Florida’s El Snappo and 3hardaway driving around in an old classic black body Mercedes like THIS, making plays between state lines. Heavy tint, all black tuxedos, with extenders and silencers on their guns. 3hardaway sets the stage with a smooth verse, touching on how Snappo made a way for his come up, the beachfront houses he only spends a month in, and the Matrix in which he resides when he mixes his percs with the lean.
That nice and easy Florida accent bends words in ways that make them roll through the tongue, and it sounds like he’s just floating through the track. When Snappo gets a hold of it though, he fires out of a rocketlauncher, flowing in ways that make no sense, and spitting crazy combos. All the girls on his tail look like Lori Harvey. Promoters should not book him if he can’t bring his gun. Every time you see him, he’s dolo, like a one man army. I nominate his verse for the hardest 22 seconds of music this year.
Bar for bar, Rochester, NY’s RX Papi has to be one of the greatest rappers of the past decade. His brain works in rhymes, and sometimes, sort of not rhymes. He reminds me a bit of Young Thug in that his natural speaking cadence has a real rhythm to it, and his talking and freestyling is much sharper than most other rappers who take the time to write and think about their lyrics. It just flows out of him, and you can see it from those Instagram lives where he’s just talking shit over random beats, and it’ll make you question how some off-hand line can be so insightful.
When he gets aggressive, he’s still a great rapper, but his strongest bag is when he gets reflective. Recent songs with producers Nicholas Craven and Alchemist have really brought him back to this, and it feels like he’s rounding into the form he was in a few years ago, around the release of “12 Stout Street.”
“Fay 8” is a beautiful tribute to Papi’s friend, and the eighth in a series of these beautiful tributes. It comes from his Where I’m From EP, fully produced by Nicholas Craven, which, in classic Papi fashion, dropped unceremoniously as a series of videos with the cover art on his YouTube. You can feel how dedicated the two were to each other. They sound like a pair who knew each other so well, their minds were melded with the same sense of humor, pride, and loyalty. That loyalty specifically is apparent all throughout the song. Papi says Fay is the type who would have hid him and taken a charge for him. Papi says he would have taken a 100 year bid for Fay too. He questions why Fay’s mother didn’t show him love when Fay was so deserving of it, and also why Fay showed Papi so much love as a kid, when he didn’t feel he was deserving of it. They were so bonded, that Papi still remembers the first line Fay ever spit in a cypher.
Losing someone you’re that locked in with from childhood has to be one of the hardest things imaginable. It’s really special that Papi is able to honor him with this series, and that he shares these intimate details about their relationship with the rest of us.
I’m a sucker for an OJ Da Juiceman sample. The only thing that is missing here is all the DJ Holiday tags from the original. But Long Beach, CA rap group TopRankGang do their thing handling the beat, alongside $lideR G. Some of these flows feel indebted directly to Chicago drill’s early days, specifically one from 0:57 to 1:10, which sounds exactly like LA Capone on Play For Keeps (complimentary). The song is a fun crew cut, and the guys look like they’re having a great time in the video, which always adds to the experience.
This song is just okay, but I needed to highlight one of my favorite diss bars of the year:
“You find it really hard to talk to your fam, you find it easy to relate to a brand.”
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