When ‘Throw Some D’s’ showed up almost a year ago, it became another hot song amongst non-elitist types and a guilty pleasure among “discerning” types. It should have been some kind of minor rallying cry for everybody who likes good rap (I guess it ultimately was?). The reaction among modern rap skeptics was predictably knee-jerk: they saw a Southern rapper, heard “crack” and a chorus about rims and blew it off. Fair enough I guess, but what’s so striking about the song is that it’s scope is so minor and the beat, besides being great, maintains some of the melancholy strains of the Switch sample and really, has more in-common with regional 90s songs about cars and women than it does with the scourge that is/was? “trap-hop”. The video too, had enough of that corporate sheen to play on MTV but with a certain naturalistic edge to match the song. But almost immediately, Rich Boy was out-shined by his overrated, loudmouth co-producer, Polow Da Don who stole the song, co-producing the beat and dropping that dick-on-the-wall line; it left Rich Boy looking like a lucky idiot with a hook-up.
Then, a few weeks before the album, ‘Boy Looka Here’ was released and for the simple fact that it wasn’t ‘Throw Some D’s’, it was disappointing but Rich Boy was just as good if not better on the track. His accent is even more pronounced (that in itself is political, hints of ‘Let’s Get This Paper’?) and he fits the beat’s stomp quite well. The video, like ‘Throw Some D’s’, maintained some regional specificity and cleverly contrasts it with some “the night before…” Vegas partying and makes a marching band parade seem way more fun than sin city. Oh yeah- and because it’s what I do (make vague, pretentious connections) there’s this vaguely Diane Arbus-like aspect to the video, especially the little kid in cowboy masks…and there are the really effective medium shot and close-up of the dude with one eye in the ‘D’s’ video. That highlights the good, stranger side of Rich Boy, the guy who was an electrical engineer and raps in a so-thick-he-doesn’t-complete-words accent and scrunches up his face to spit about dead friends and hypocrite religion and bullshit wars…Defenders of the rapper cite label politics and waning sales as excuses for the album missing greatness. That’s not an excuse for making an okay-but-lifeless album (especially one looked over by a producer with something resembling a vision!) but it does explain why it happened. It reminds me of resentful sports fans defending their team or justifying a loss, “if we hadn’t given up that touchdown” (oh but you did!): If Rich Boy hadn’t succumbed to major label expectations and maybe the demands of an asshole producer he’d have made a great album! Not catering to those demands or somehow magically, rapping over them and making them irrelevant is what separates a great rapper from a good one. Still, that potential and a particularly crappy year for new artists got him on the cover of ‘XXL’ with a bunch of other relatively good newcomers and the release of ‘Let’s Get This Paper’ shows a saavy focus on the smart, good, side of his rap persona:
I considered writing a whole blog on this and might still, but more often than not, what these demands to get/make money are is a less douchey way of saying “let it go”. That is to say, when Jay-Z and Nas squashed their beef, Nas said something about how they were going to join together and get that money instead. Rappers, for reasons valid and retarded, don’t like to sound like hippie-dippie faggots so saying shit like “Oh you know, I’m really above all this beef foolishness” is something they just don’t do; instead they say, “fuck that, let’s just get this paper” which says the same thing in a way that is no less self-congratulatory but a little more honest: it’s much more realistic fuck you than some “being the better man” bullshit that still leaves you feeling like a punk. ‘Let’s Get This Paper’ is a call against apathy and for action…Stop complaining, go out and do it! The song is not only orders around its listeners with smart, pissed off rhymes, but it is Rich Boy’s own statement self (he paid for the video himself). Somehow, given the push and pull of Rich Boy’s brief career (so far), it makes weird, convoluted sense that a true assertion of self wouldn’t occur until the fourth single.
Very efficiently written.
Krystina Raffa
18 Nov 10 at 5:30 am
rather valuable material, all round I picture this is worthy of a book mark, thanks
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