ATSIC S04E32 - Told Them
When I sent over the folder of my trap picks from the past few weeks, Dice said that this music was all really slow and that it sort of depressed him. I explained that trap is what the kids crave, and that I still like a lot of it. Some of the guys have bars, and the beats are only slow if you count slow; they’re 120 bpm instead of 60. Then he put in an afternoon's worth of mixing, and the mix makes me really happy. It’s dope to have such traditional DJ chops flexed on a mix of such modern-sounding rap.
Dice and I both pull inspiration from mixtape DJs. I told them that every week would be a new flavor. I told them we’d be back week after week with more of the best new Hip Hop the country has to offer. I told them I pay more attention than any one person should rightly be able to. Get used to these because we’re still right here, and we’re still gaining momentum.
We don’t quite hit the coast-to-coast mark this week, but we’ve got things covered from Vancouver to Montreal.
Elev8ed is back with “Manifest,” bringing the mix into reality with some high-energy motivation music.
DillanPonders & BVB never stop dropping music, so “Rapper Weed” isn’t their newest drop, but it’s sort of a theme song for a guy like me, so we included it.
Toronto femcee DvblM has been on ATSIC a few times now I think, and this week “BGA” had me singing about bad ghyal adrenaline. I might not be the target audience, but I caught a stray on this one.
Dice went wild with the juggles on Gone to LA’s new single with B1 the Architect, J. Hen, waltoscales & Nathan Skullz, so I’m not sure whose verses you actually hear beyond B1, but the energy is up and “The Truth” is revealed.
“Born Sinner” from Calgary’s Black$tar and Yung Papi Bonnito has to be illegal, but it’s dope. Always interesting to see what the algorithms do and don’t catch. Shouts to Kendrick.. and also Cole I guess.
Konan Doyle and Young Stitch put on a clinic with the back-and-forth raps on “Quid Pro Quo.” Dope rappity rap stuff that might not have much to tell us but uses a lot of words to tell it.
Kryple’s new one “Feeling Good” reminded me of my days running around shouting “Feeling Pretty Good!!!” on Edmonton stages, but his track here is much less tongue-in-cheek than I was, and much more an actual assessment of his success and position in the music industry, and the satisfaction that getting there has brought him. I was just trying to manifest it, and in hindsight, I guess I did.
I didn’t really know much about Road Runner when I bought this “Should I End It?” track. I saw Fly in Formation season 1 guest Spitty post about how RR popped into his comments on a post to tell him that he should quit music though, and it got me thinking a bit deeper on a re-listen to this track. Dude says something like “I know a rapper claim the 6 but he’s from Peel” and “I’m on the block, my ops be on computers” (Spitty is from Brampton/Peel, and had/has a tech job he quit for a year to pursue rap prominence). I think we’ve accidentally played a track that’s dissing a friend of the show here, or something. RR can’t really hold onto a topic for more than one sentence at a time, but he’s gotta be throwing some sideways darts on this one. Speaking of sentences, Road Runner also says something about skipping English class on this one (sounds about right), which, along with his accent made me think he must be someone who’s immigrated to the country. He sounds like he is. He doesn’t look like he sounds. He also admits to Percocet addiction, as well as questioning whether he should end himself. Weird approach to a diss track, but hey, makes a clap back easy enough to formulate by just answering his title question for him. As I was doing this write-up, I found a new RR video, which was the first time I’d seen the guy, and man did I laugh at dudes' dance moves and weird-ass attempted flex of flying to Banff. It had 30,000 plays and a bunch of 5-word comments from the past 6 days, so the bots, the Toronto mans, or someone out there was feeling it, but I wasn’t. Pretty tone deaf for a white guy to be releasing music called Trapistani right now if you ask me, but no one did, and I might be being presumptuous here, I don’t really know anything about him. This might be the last time you hear homie on ATSIC, but if we get a response from Spitty I’ll play that because he actually raps and I don’t think he’s going to let this guy sing him out of the game.
Look at these numbers on dude’s Spotify below this paragraph. When we talk about how people can tell if you’re buying plays, I’d say that having 25000 plays on a song that’s 8 days old, while having 25271 monthly listeners is a good indicator. How else does that happen? I can’t say for sure, but that looks like a ‘25k streams’ package with 70, or maybe 270 extra monthly listeners to me. Something’s weird anyways. Maybe it’s just peoples taste in music, but this is sus.
I don’t think Dice wasn’t a huge fan of Kevin Na$h’s mumble raps. I could tell what he was saying, but we got different ears. Either way, Dices’ remix of “Wolves at Night” made me lose my shit. It’s a whole vibe.
Junk and Messiah bring back some lyricism on “Griselda Blanco,” rapping about their lady being a mafia boss. Vancouver in full effect.
“Mix it Up” from Eva Shaw, G Milla, & Jaay Cee knocks and has some catchy bars. There’s an art to ad-libbing, and whoever did the first verse, Milla or Jaay, nailed it. Slick stuff.
Then it’s off to Mississauga for RUNXGUN’s new one “Crazy,” talking about people trying to deter them from dreaming big. I only know that an AP is a watch because I heard Memphis Bleek talking about his Rolex collection on Drink Champs this week, but I’m not here to crush anyones high hopes. I talk to these guys coming up on Fly in Formation on Nov 28.
Spiegz came through in Twitch chat after being one of 14 people who saw my Tik Tok posts, and after a quick intro he sent his album “Punk Hazzard” over. The Ottawa emcee is pushing the genre with some punk pop Hip Hop mash-up styles; definitely check it out if you like the steez on this one. Lots of anime references, lots of autotune.
“Politics” has pHoenix Pagliacci recruiting Cadence Weapon to pick apart some industry politics. Interpersonal, industry, or world politics, I think it’s all worth talking about. Been asking a few more political questions to gather opinions on Fly in Formation lately.
Dillin Hoox is another Dillan/in who drops new songs every week, and he’s a bit less consistent quality than the other (DillanPonders), but I still tap in and enjoy the artistic journey from week to week. This one was one of my favs that he’s done lately, “New Man.”
K-Blitz, DubbaveLi, Nate Husser, and Killy finish out the set. I don’t have much to add about these; I’m tired of typing, and no one really reads these things anyway, do they? Either way, the mix was dope, props to DJ Dice.
The Interview with Mickey O’Brien was a really good one, with his return for a second season marking the second Handsolo Records artist to return to the show. We talked about Orebody, pay to play, booking tours, Hip Hop’s political leaning, and a bunch more. The full video is in another post, or in the playlist on Youtube. They happen live on Twitch every week, I’ll post the upcoming schedule below.
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