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.
I stupidly bought into this perception of Rich Boy. His rapping wasn’t anything to write home about (although it is rewarding, Rich Boy’s actually subtle), he looked pretty stupid (like a character from NES’s River City Ransom) and through some unfortunate marketing- advertisements showing a thin, designer hoodie-wearing Rich Boy, chest-exposed, mugging for the camera- and my rap-fan cynicism (too many rookies with hot singles, not delivering) seemed verified. Somehow, that lame-as-shit cover was burned into my brain. It meant that either Rich Boy wasn’t the kinda-everyman ‘Throw Some D’s and his electrical engineering dropout anti-street cred that became street cred persona suggested or he was the kind of rapper willing to you know, put on a lame hoodie, expose his chest, and cash-in on his single. Just from that cover, I could predict an album that was a little too long, started out with five or so good tracks, suffered from poor pacing, and had at least one R & B crossover. 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…
Ultimately, as Rich Boy’s album loomed, I found Polow da Don to be full of the same mixed signals as Rich Boy. The beat for ‘Boy Looka Here’ is cool but it’s this obnoxious Timbaland type beat that brings together Southern stomp and disparate elements like a strummed acoustic guitar and space synths and people are supposed to be impressed, well fuck that. Of course, around the same time Da Don was dropping this surprisingly great song but that too feels underwhelming next to ‘Throw Some D’s’ and Da Don is revealed as a good but not great producer; and then, Rich Boy’s album drops and the Rich Boy produced ‘The Madness’ has more in common with ‘D’s’ than a lot of da Don’s beats…
And then…the next next single is ‘Good Things’, the track I knew the album would have and surprise- it falls exactly at track 6 and slows the album’s momentum down and just its existence is enough to make me revert to those initial rap-cynic feelings for the guy. It is a track like this, its inevitable release as a single, and songs with titles like ‘Touch That Ass’ that make a guy like Rich Boy hard to embrace and explains why talk of him as not being great or even good, but “showing potential” were so pervasive: Talk of potential is the kind of talk mixtapes should be prefaced with, not major label debuts.
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:
The video’s a little calculated with it’s overwrought imagery and beautiful-but-broken cinematography but rappers have done way worse. The whole thing is really sincere and obviously comes from a real place. His calling-out specific dead friends (“R.I.P Pooh Bear”) and not just general appeals to dead homies is effective, as is seeing a grave- prop or not- with those same words Rich Boy just rapped, framed in close-up. The dropping of the gold atop the grave is obviously performative but it too works. The song and the video, makes clear everything that’s been bubbling under the surface in other Rich Boy songs and videos. Those realistic images from ‘D’s’ and ‘Boy Looka Here’ are now explicitly political and the everyman victory of getting new rims on your car becomes the angry everyman observations that the same prick you went to high school with is now a preacher: “Preachers in that pulpit, say they teach that bullshit/Know how we know it’s bullshit? Same niggas I went to school with”. His answer to all this very real and palpable bullshit is to “get that paper” and while simpletons might bemoan this “problematic” suggestion, they are missing the point (and probably have enough money).
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.
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