PFOS: VOLUME 2

Happy Thursday and welcome back to Pocket Full of Stones. I realize that Vol. 2 was delayed and I’m sorry for the wait. 

I still plan on doing these letters regularly, but I’d rather they arrive late than undercooked. 

You know the drill, so I’ll skip the formalities: these are my favorite rap albums and singles from the past week (with some bonus content at the end).

Albums

1. Sheff G - The Unluccy Luccy Kid

Producers: Ayy Walker, Deltah Beats, Great John, Yondo

Label: Winners Circle / EMPIRE

Standout Tracks: “8th Block”, “All My Life”, “Designer ft. Sleepy Hollow”, “We Getting Money”, “Breesh (Intro)”, “Meance ft. Sleepy Hollow & Mozzy”

Sheff G is a Brooklyn artist with a razor-sharp flow who raps about New York street life in somber vignettes. He’s only 19 years old, but on his debut album The Unluccy Luccy Kid he sounds world-weary and wise beyond his years. 

Sheff’s writing presents a hustler who grew up too fast and turned cynical from experience. He repeatedly expresses piercing disdain for frauds, and this dead-serious perspective on credibility makes it clear he earned his the hard way. His threats are offhandedly poetic (“Got a glock in this Benz / This .40 go Tyson, will knock out your mans”), and he unfurls his syllables with craftsmanlike precision and patience. 

More than just a rappity-ass-rapper, Sheff G is also a skilled songwriter, and the hooks and bridges on this album are tighter and catchier than just about anything you’ll find on Rap Caviar. The austere production from relative unknown Great John places this project in a storied lineage of gloomy NYC storytelling albums that traces from Mobb Deep’s The Infamous to Don Q’s Corner Stories. Sheff G is still figuring out his voice, but The Unluccy Luccy Kid is a fully realized body of work with a vivid atmosphere and point of view that makes me optimistic about the future of New York’s rap scene. 

2. Hook -I Love You, Hook

Producers: chandynicehuman, 2thousan9, ayowiththemayo, swvsh

Label: Self Released

Standout Tracks: All of them

In a cover story for The Fader earlier this year, Houston superstar Megan Thee Stallion made a comment about rap’s gendered double standards that I still think about a lot:

"Being a girl too—they criticize you harder than they criticize men," she explained. "If I was out there making little noises like Uzi and Carti be making, they would not rock with that. And not saying that they don’t be going hard, because we definitely finna turn up to both of them, but if it was a chick, like—no."

Megan was raising an important and under-discussed point about the blatantly misogynistic expectations that rap fans project onto female artists. Los Angeles rapper Hook has apparently taken Meg’s argument as a challenge, because her latest EP I Love You Hook is a confounding project full of “little noises” that evokes the insular psychedelia of Playboi Carti at his best. 

The 21 year-old Hook told Fader that she spent much of her childhood performing in R&B girl groups managed by her stepfather, but I Love You Hook clearly hails from the Based God School of Songwriting. Her raps are all breathy, manic streams of consciousness over beats by producers with names like 2thousan9 and ayowiththemayo that sound like they’re blossoming and decaying simultaneously. 

Megan is right in the macro sense that hip-hop’s treatment of women is long overdue for a reckoning. This spellbinding fragment of artsy LA SoundCloud rap obliterates the sexist case against women pushing hip-hop’s stylistic boundaries. 

3. Kevin Gates - I’m Him

Producers: Beat By Jeff, CashMoneyAP, FRACTIOUS FRANK, Go Grizzly, MD$, Nard & B, Richie Souf, Six7, Take A Daytrip, XL Eagle, Yung Lan

Label: Atlantic / Bread Winners’ Association

Standout Tracks: “RBS Intro”, “Icebox”, “Lonely”*, “Walls Talking”

Since releasing Luca Brasi Story in 2013, Baton Rouge legend Kevin Gates has quietly built a body of work that ranks among the strongest rap catalogues of the last decade. I’m Him is a relatively minor piece of his discography, but it’s worth spinning because Gates remains an endlessly entertaining artist and personality. 

The album centers around Gates’ romantic life, and he goes from deadpanning heady psychoanalysis like “I subconsciously engage in things that's making me suffer/And this in turn has an effect on how I deal with a woman” to confessing that he thinks his new French Bulldog is cute because it has a big forehead like Rihanna. I’m Him is more than a little ridiculous, but Kevin Gates has the talent and emotive range to turn even his weirdest inner monologues** into immersive albums. 

*I shed a tear when I first heard Gates interpolating “I had to make a couple bands by my lonely” on “Lonely”. The enduring influence of Derek “Speaker Knockerz” McAllister, an antisocial FL Studio whiz who made music in his bedroom and died before he blew up, is heartbreaking and inspiring in equal measure.

**Worth noting that I’m Him has no features and Gates almost never includes other rappers/singers on his albums - they’re all deep dives into his psyche. 

4. Dababy - KIRK

Producers: 1st Class, Ambezza, CashMoneyAP, Dez Wright, DJ Clue, DJ Kid, Flip_00, Jasper Harris, JetsonMade, Kenny Beats, London on da Track, Mantiz, Myles William, Neeko Baby, Producer 20, Queen Sixites, Sean Da Firzt, SethInTheKitchen, Starboy, Tahj Money

Label: Interscope

Standout Tracks: “GOSPEL (ft. Chance The Rapper, Gucci Mane & YK Osiris)”*, “REALLY (ft. Stunna 4 Vegas)”**, “POP STAR (feat. Kevin Gates)”, “INTRO”

While I’m not as crazy about Charlotte, North Carolina sensation Dababy as some people, I give him infinite props for originality. He became one of 2019’s breakout pop stars by executing a rap style that sounds like nothing else out there, but his commitment to form can make his full-length projects feel a bit one-note. 

On his blockbuster debut, Dababy mostly hits that one note - brash lyrics about his Herculean machismo delivered in slippery cadences that attack the beat like a boxer battering a Maize ball - with enough charisma to sell it. KIRK might not change your life, but trunk-rattlers like “REALLY” and “PROLLY HEARD” will almost certainly improve your house party. 

*”GOSPEL” is way better than it should be and features one of my favorite post-prison Gucci Mane verses. 

**I can’t thank Dababy enough for introducing the world to the ebullient South Carolina spitter Stunna 4 Vegas.

Singles

1. Polo G - Heartless (prod. Mustard)

Polo G is a 20 year-old rising star from the North Side of Chicago whose debut album Die A Legend is my far-and-away favorite project of 2019. “Heartless”, his new single with producer and West Coast pioneer Mustard, could’ve easily fit on that album, and it captures everything that makes Polo G one of the most vital voices of rap’s new generation. 

Drawing inspiration from hometown heroes like G Herbo and Lil Durk, Polo writes with penetrating frankness about the traumas of growing up in poverty and feeling trapped. There’s no gratuitous flexing or posturing, just unvarnished truths about surviving in a cycle of all-or-nothing violence (“We hold a grudge and we want blood, we can’t look past the issue/play with us and you gon’ die, n**** it’s kinda simple”). 

On “Heartless”, he weaves cutting, sometimes devastating* lyrics (“We really want him dead he got hit up close range/He fucked up in the head, he wanna see some more brains”) into a flow that’s both instantly memorable and deeply despondent, punctuating the chorus with a pledge to remember his roots: “Told my inner self ‘I promise you I won’t change’”. 

*In another particularly brutal line, Polo dismisses a female suitor as an “Instagram addict” whose only motivation is “more fame”.

2. Tee Grizzley - Satish (prod. Helluva Beats)

The context of this song is almost too sad to write about, but here goes: Jobina “JB” Brown, aunt and manager of Detroit rapper Tee Grizzley, was recently murdered at the age of 41 in a drive-by shooting that was apparently meant to target her famous nephew. It’s fucked-up beyond words that Brown, a beloved maternal figure who was deeply involved in Grizzley’s music career and used her position to help out local Detroit artists like the inimitable Sada Baby, was gunned down in the same city she spent her life uplifting. 

“Satish” is Tee Grizzley’s first song addressing the incident, and he doesn’t mince words (“Every tear that I shed/another thousand on your head”). Swinging from grief-stricken to hellbent on revenge, he articulates the gravity of his circumstances better than a newsletter blurb ever could: “I got one less person who wanted more for me”.

3. BCM Key & NoCap- Frozen Hearts (prod. youngkimj)

“Frozen Hearts” is another single on this list with depressing context. Shortly before the song came out, Mobile, Alabama rapper NoCap turned himself in to Alabama state authorities. According to the Mobile County Sheriff’s office, he’s facing charges of discharging a gun into an occupied or unoccupied building/vehicle, probation violation, possession of/receiving a controlled substance, and reckless endangerment. 

Mobile-native BCM Key delivers a heartfelt verse on “Frozen Hearts”, but NoCap, a heavy-hearted rap crooner with a knack for homophone wordplay, steals the scene. There’s so much sincere emotion in his voice that potentially goofy one-liners like “I ain’t talking trucks, but I can’t wait until da-rain-go” and “might get charged with murder cuz I’m always on my ho-mies-side” convey passionate urgency. 

Here’s hoping we don’t see another young black creative silenced by the criminal justice system.

4. Jackboy - Live and Learn (prod. Jetsonmade)

My biggest mistake in last week’s newsletter was the omission of Lost In My Head, the new album from Pompano Beach, Florida rapper Jackboy that I stumbled upon while reading up on the Dababy album coverage. 

I came across “Live and Learn”, a soulful standout track, because the beat was made by Dababy’s flagship producer and fellow South Carolinian Jetsonmade. Jetson’s production here shows tremendous versatility - the stripped down guitar riffs and understated drums are a far cry from his contributions to KIRK and Baby on Baby. And Jackboy, a Kodak Black protege and gifted rapper in his own right, plays the bluesman beautifully:

You can give me your love, but can’t get mine in return 

My cold heart been hurt before and I can still feel the burn

All I ask is loyalty cuz that’s my biggest concern

You can’t fully have my heart, cuz I done lived and I learned

Wake me up when Post Malone writes a chorus this poignant.  

5. Peewee Longway & Money Man - OOOWWWEEE (prod. Cassius Jay & Mooktoven)

Nobody really wants to hear a Peewee Longway sex jam, and Peewee’s contribution to “OOOWWWEEE” is not his finest. It’s the performance from Atlanta artist and Cash Money Records graduate Money Man that earns this single the Pocket Full of Stones stamp of approval. 

Money Man (whose recent mixtape Paranoia is a wonderful piece of nonchalant lifestyle rap) has a resonant baritone and an intuitive ability to embellish his melodies with auto-tune. He’s not saying much here, but the way his voice cuts through the zen-garden-type-beat from Cassius Jay and Mooktoven is nothing short of luxurious. Just that subtle lilt in Money Man’s voice when he intones “I call up my Arab, he bringing a load” makes the price of admission (45 seconds of Peewee Longway trying to be seductive) well worth it. 

Peewee and Money Man’s aptly named joint mixtape LONG MONEY drops this Friday.

Major in History

This section is dedicated to “throwbacks” (i.e. music that came out any time before 2019) that I consider under-appreciated and worth revisiting. 

Gunplay - Bible on the Dash (prod. Morris Brothers) 

September 3, 2012

Hunter Thompson used to transcribe The Great Gatsby on his typewriter just to feel the music of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s language on his fingertips, and I felt compelled to do the same with Gunplay’s lyrics when I sat down to write about “Bible on the Dash”.

The dread-headed Miami-native and former Rick Ross underling never got enough credit for his literary prowess. This forgotten gem from Gunplay’s 2012 mixtape 601 & Snort puts his coked-out genius on full display. 

Being down on your luck and ready to risk it all is a theme older than rap itself, but Gunplay’s expression of this trope is unlike anything I’ve heard before or since. Instead of telling us he’s trigger happy, he laments that “it’s a full time gig tryna keep this glock cold”. Instead of saying he lives in the fast lane, he cautions “when my Prada press that pedal, bitch you better fasten up.” Instead of asking his pastor for forgiveness, he poses a fatalistic question: “What’s the fastest way to heaven for a bastard with a tarnished past, give me an honest answer/With all this Hannah Montana, without the Arm & Hammer, am I gonna get the slammer or the casket?”

“Bible on the Dash” is an absolute masterstroke of drug-addled desperation, and the way he opens the second verse (“cutting corners on Coronas, tryna buck up on a bonus/out here on my lonely last stogie, but I’m focused”) still gives me chills. 

Gunplay’s kept a low profile in recent years, but he still raps and intermittently releases great music*. The artist born Richard Morales Jr. never had any pretensions of pop stardom, just a harrowing story to get off his chest and a command of language that captured its weight. Or as he put it, “a problem and a plan.”

*It warmed my nostalgic heart to hear his guest verse on a 2019 Rick Ross album that sounds like it was conceived during Maybach Music’s early 2010s peak and preserved in a time capsule.

Required Reading

1. The Controversial Use of Rap Lyrics As Evidence - Briana Younger, The New Yorker

2. The jailed LA rapper whose songs were used to prosecute him - Sam Levin, The Guardian

3. Duwap Kaine Is the Best Rapper That Won’t Show Up In Your Algorithm - Alphonse Pierre, Pitchfork