Image via God Body Bingo/Instagram
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Look, no one is asking us to be heroes here. When the stallion and the extraterrestrial pull in for the robbery, don’t fight back and just accept the L. “whoev3r” puts Georgian ascendant Jelani Imani and Atlantic seaboard wanderer DavidTheTragic together as BIGBRO!. They traffic in fisheye lens wooziness and fleet claustrophobia, slithering around from stick-up to a victorious parking lot weigh-in. David throws leaves of kale onto the triple beam. Jelani removes his mask to sample spicy sriracha. Disrespect typically doesn’t sound this fuzzy or off-center or delicious. The duo’s BIGBRO! full-length evokes oily egg rolls, crinkled rolling papers and grocery store drills as designed by Kōhei Horikoshi.
We’re not wholly sure who or what Errol Eats Everything is – an afro-futurist treatise across cratedigging boom-bap, but also maybe a Gorillaz-style virtual idol designed to incapacitate Mayor Eric Adams. We don’t see Errol himself, just a young, plump avatar with gold fronts and clubmaster shades. We definitely feel him, though. “Energy cannot be destroyed nor created / But energy can change form,” he spits through snapping snare drums and an MC Lyte loop. He narrates a zero-sum game of survival around Bed Stuy, then telekinetically bends the fork to commemorate his mother Geneva’s passing. Errol offers a refreshing hybrid of battle-worn earnestness, paying tithe to The Mecca while also shouting out homies in Ajax and Mississauga. Movin’ through places, space and time, eating everything on all the tables.
Rather than being late on everything or finding banal ways to chip at the dignity of its workers, Rockstar Games should really just lock in with Cookin Soul. The prolific SP1200 production duo leads the league in loading screen sunset vibes and Grand Theft Auto-type cruisers, vaporizing and then muddying downbeat jazz funk using what I’ve concluded is a timespace-melting Motorola Razr. ANKHLEJOHN is so easy to root for, and his pronunciation of “hilarious” (he-lahhhrious) is perhaps the singular good thing to ever happen in the American capital. He sifts through the neighboring lobbyists and minor ghouls around his orbit, before tossing a loping pass to Maryland’s Premo Rice – who says he’ll take the ladies to Senegal, or synagogue, or wherever the gameplay mission calls for. Memory card required for the rest of John’s excellent Michelin Man tape.
The Rollin’ 40s delegate has been on an extended heat check since the gnx breakout in November. He’s now averaging three video drops per month, plus guest-spot bangers, and sounds increasingly settled in after a torturous seven-year prison bid. Dody’s flow is slinking and crowded, lodged in permafrost delivery that doesn’t bend corners as much as erase them off the map. “Rich As Fucc” has him pulling up in a tinted Rolls Royce truck, chiefing a fatty at Marathon Burger and counting racks in fluorescent cobalt light. Blacc Sam and Lefty Gunplay pop out in support, while FBeat lays a beat to hop fences to. Dody flattens a lifetime of grinding paranoia into one abstract “yesterday.” His past is finally prologue, buried with the burner phones and other plastic totems of stolen time.
Good rap music moves listeners. Great rap music physically relocates them. God Body Bingo gives us the molasses truculence of Grind Time Official-era Killer Mike with the smoothed edges of prime Lil’ Flip. There’s no double-entendre here and nothing to smarmily annotate on Rap Genius. Nah, it’s really this simple – the game is the game, the winners win and the losers lose. Bingo rumbles through a Texas soul scramble, plucking a candy paint harp with his poker face. He cuts turf like Stringer Bell and dictates the rules and regulations like Brother Mouzone.
Detroiter Luhh Dyl puts Ellington and Coltrane in Cartier buffs in “Be Foreal.” We get all the regional trappings of rubbery 808s and hardscrabble shit-talking, but it’s cool to hear a jazz suite in this spot instead of the usual war drums and clocktower bellows. Next order of business – get Rio some Herbie Hancock flips.
LA bellwether G Perico links up again with DatPiff dot com patron saint DJ Drama. Their Gangsta Grillz mixtape Hot Shot gave the smooth-rapping Broadway Gangster Crip an added polish in 2023. Perico is most in his bag on one-producer lifts with fellow Angelenos Steelz or Gotdamnitdupri, but Drama should ultimately be the one to elevate him out east and down south.
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