Genius, welcome to your new favorite rapper. Uninventive writers liken him to Kendrick Lamar for their dizzying flows, penchant for tightly-packed lyrics, and higher voices. But I'll be damned if he's not the best rapper to emerge since Kendrick's run at the top, and out of Atlanta's absurd gestation period for birthing great rappers at something like one-a-day, J.I.D. stands as the one with the potential to last longest. All for an EP that he nonchalantly described to me as “practice”
Over the course of thirty minutes, J.I.D. and I bounced from his favorite sandwich – “roast beef/ham/turkey/chipotle gouda/boar's head/multigrain” from Publix -, to the inspiration for the EP's name – “[Leonardo DiCaprio]'s the best at what he does, he has all of the accolades” -, and the members of his top-five. Tucked into the latter group was the band Little Dragon, which came with the important distinction of making him “scream like a 13-year-old-girl at their concerts”. Opposing the standard of rappers seeking to metamorphose themselves into an unattainable figure, J.I.D.'s music – you know what? f** this. One of his top-five is Action Bronson, and in the spirit of Tom Breihan's great write-ups on Bronson's tapes, I'm done talking about music made at a level that transcends being spoken about: it speaks infinitely about itself. Over eight beats crafted to showcase J.I.D.'s incomparable flows and lyricism, wrap your mind around these (that, I must remind you, were essentially freestyled)
“Meditating in silence besides the loud in my pocket / I don't want to hear nothing, a rat pissing on cotton / A rapper pissing on rappers, I'm a jekyll, I'm a jackal / From rapper to rapper, you rappers PaRappa the Rapper”, “Pissed and paranoid, I'm grabbing on my pistol / My world in a dismal state for dismissal / I dipped my dick in gold / Girl, who sent you? / Lord!”, “I know that she probably leave and break my achey breaky heart / But don't care ‘cause don't need that organ / Probably find that sh** again when I have me a daughter / But with my karma, I probably have forty-four of them”, “Lightweight J.I.D., get drunk off a Yuengling / Let that thing sing, sing, sing, send him to Sing Sing”, and then to conclude, the best hook of the year:
“Boy, I be happy with nothing, imagine me if I got it / Say if my nine stop busting, imagine me with the shotty / I been pushing this Pontiac, imagine me in the 'Rari / Bumping "God's Whisper" by Raury, probably be with a shorty”
If the reception that the DiCaprio EP is deservedly receiving continues, imagining will be a thing of the past
9.0/10
Other hip-hop releases of note this week:
Wara From The NBHD - If Guns Could Speak EP | 8.0/10
Black Cobain - No Buzz | 6.3/10
MPA Wicced - In The Mean Time | 6.3/10
Open Mike Eagle - A Special Episode Of EP | 8.2/10