“Tuesdays used to matter. Now the only thing that happens is you, you, and you say ‘shit, I been had that,’ ‘shit, I been heard that.'”

Wale, The Perfect Plan, 2008

You have no idea how hyped I am on this song. I mean. Either “you probably pay fifty for a gram from a Rasta” or “this the smile Scar had when he smoked Mufasa,” one of them, is already the Bar of the Year for 2020. These lines seem like they would be in the same verse, part of the same rhyme pattern. But they’re not! Sir Michael Rocks is just that dope! The other Cool Kid, Chuck Inglish, has often said that if he felt like it, Sir Michael Rocks would be the best rapper alive. He’s not wrong. Take it from Old Man Ebro: The Cool Kids is back.

Honestly what do you want out of a pop song in 2020? Because if it’s not here, I don’t know if you can be helped.

There was kind of a lot riding on this when I heard about it, because, most of the time, these supergroup remixes end up like that shit Miley and Ariana and LDR did for the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack.¹ But then sometimes a supergroup remix is more like “Lady Marmalade”² with Xtina or “Ghetto Supastar” ³ with Mya. This is more like the latter than the former. even though it’s not from a soundtrack. Listen. Anything Kero Kero Bonito on it is going to be fun.

You know how hard it is to make joke rap? That anyone would ever want to listen to? Like if you were like, ‘yo, I’m thinking ab0ut making a joke rap album,’ I’d be like ‘while you are a humorous person, and rap music does rely on many of the same formal structures as joke-telling, I would very much advise against this.’ There’s been a lot of joke rap. From Joe Pesci to Lil Dicky. The results are, uh. Uneven. I think Das Racist⁴ were the last guys to do joke rap well. Joke rap is hard to do, you see, because there’s a lot going against you. For one, you have to be good at rapping. And then you’re up against actual rappers, most of whom are already very funny. But if you’re going to do it, you might as well get rap’s reigning mystery man Spark Master Tape on the shit, lending it some credibility and a dope ass verse. 

Rap. Rap rap rap. I feel like I write a lot about it. I think a lot about it. For a lot of people, I’m the guy they go to with their thoughts and questions about it. Rap. Yes. Love it. Love rap.

But then lately I’ve been going through a shift. It started when I started enjoying the samples as much or more than the rap songs made out of them. Then I started in with the kind of “funky jazz” Ricky Powell was walking around NYC with his little transistor radio.⁵ And now I’m like a full blown washed jazz dad. So, in my day to day, what I’m listening to is a lot more like Makaya McCraven’s “reimagining” of Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here⁶ than, like, “Dr. Birds.”

Actually, usually I’m vocal-free. Like have you heard McCraven’s Universal Beings album? Wooooo.

1. I’m referring here to Charlie’s Angels, which is a movie reboot of a movie reboot of a television series. Nobody saw it.
2. Which is a remake of a Patti LaBelle song for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Moulin Rouge was good. A lot of people saw it.
3. “Ghetto Supastar” isn’t exactly a remake of anything, but it does sample and rely on the melody of “Islands in the Stream.” It was from the Bulworth soundtrack. Bulworth was okay. Some people saw it. It’s not as good as “Ghetto Supastar.”
4. It’s easy to forget how fucking dope Das Racist was.
5. I wonder if this was the same kind of rap dude existential crisis the Beastie Boys were going through around The In Sound from Way Out era.
6. This iteration of CFY,K borrows its color scheme from I’m New Here.