CEITEDMOFO
Banned
While there is certainly a street angle to Starlito’s music, in an industry full of people trying so hard to create, maintain, and portray an image he comes across as weirdly honest. Not in the “he’s from the street and everything he says is a true story kind of way”, it’s more like his raps are merely a reflection of his stream of consciousness. Whether he is trying to reconcile his desire to have children with his desire for sexual escapades (“Everywhere I go somebody talking about kids, and I ain’t got one… really want three/but still want threesomes in the middle of the week.”) or the financial burdens that he shoulders (“I got eight bills due today and two more due on the 12th/half of them ain’t even mine, hell I’ll probably just smoke what’s left”) there is certainly a unique element of transparency in his raps. Furthermore, Starlito is one of the few rappers to seriously address the subject of mental health. He has made entire projects dedicated to the subject (Metal WARfare,At War With Myself) in which he often self-diagnosis his own symptoms (mostly depression) in his music, a much less vague and more personable approach than some of his peers (i.e. Kid Cudi).
Another thing that makes him intriguing is that he is one of the most spontaneous rappers ever. Lito will drop his music at anytime without warning with his idiosyncrasies reflected in the projects. In 2013 he released a mixtape where he recorded all ten songs between 4:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M. with the time that the songs were recorded in the song titles when it was released. In 2014 he released a full length mixtape titled Theories the day before his album came out. In 2015 he released a mixtape titled Passed The Present which was only one thirty minute track of him freestyling over all Future instrumentals. Even his most successful project to date, Step Brothers Two (Step Brothers Three is on the way!) a collaborative album with Memphis rapper Don Trip stemmed from a mixtape that the pair threw together in less than a week and put out without any prior promotion. The mixtape was so unrefined that two of the songs were simply titled 4th Song and 5th Song because those were the 4th and 5th songs they recorded together. While these may come across as publicity stunts, he doesn’t seem concerned with self-promotion or fame at all. He has a modest social media following and rarely collaborates with artists besides his immediate friends Don Trip and Kevin Gates… and why would he? He has had a long career (he began having success rapping in 2005) and has experienced what it is like to be signed to a label as he was to Cash Money Records as well as Yo Gotti’s CMG label during various early stages in his career. He has and absurd number of albums/mixtapes and hundreds of songs yet not a trace of a radio single or any attempt to go “mainstream”. A recent instagram post of him flaunting a BMW i8 suggests that he is financially stable, so chances are he’s going to stick to randomly releasing mixtapes and making songs about not being able to sleep at night.
Rittz (Atlanta, GA)
Rittz is a fat thirty-something year-old white dude with long red hair that prior to becoming a successful musician worked everywhere from restaurant kitchens to K-Mart. Forget marketable, it’s easy to write him off before you even hear him rap. Everyone loves to compare every single white rapper to Eminem but Rittz and Eminem actually have some striking similarities and if we look at rap from a technical aspect he is damn near as good. The fact that Eminem kind of exhausted the whole white-trash/working class rapper complex, hasn’t really helped his career either. I believe that many people perceive him to be the king of that realm so they aren’t willing to listen to anyone’s story that is similar. Rittz too came from battle rap winning Battlegrounds on Hot 107.9 in the early 2000’s before enduring many bumps on the road to success. Even the subject matter in their raps is similar (drug abuse, depression, relationships with significant others, what it is like being a white rapper, etc.) Furthermore, while he does have his own signature double time flow (i.e. Twista) he often employs Eminem-esque syllable play (this man made nightmares and ideas rhyme). While some of his influences are clear, he has cultivated a style that is all his own. Aside for his speedy rapid fire delivery he uses distinctive and peculiar melodies both in his verses and on many of his hooks. The most common of which is when the use of a borderline falsetto technique in many of his hooks.
The track “Wishin’” is great example of this on his verses his cadence is somber yet on the hook his vocals sound spaced out and he uses his ability to hit higher notes to blend the two together perfectly. While he might be the most slept on MC on this list, he does boast some significant accomplishments including racking up over seventeen million plays on his song, “Switch Lanes” on YouTube, signing to Tech N9NE’s Strange Music and having his most recent album Next To Nothing peak at number two on the Billboard rap chart. “I was at the BET awards I was sitting right next to Luda and Rick Ross/but who would have thought I was just at Jim & Nick’s flippin’ chicken tenders and french fries?,” from his song “White Rapper” is his career in a nutshell.
Ab-Soul (Carson, CA)
“I did this shyt legally blind, n*gga,” proclaims the 29 year old on “W.R.O.H” a track from his 2014 album These Days. An allusion to his battle with Steven Johnson Syndrome, which left his cornea badly damaged (he is rarely seen without sunglasses on) and blacked lips, which earned him the nickname, “the black lip pastor”. His lyrics are laced with references to psychedelic drug use (“please don’t tell my momma this ain’t marijuana”), conspiracy theories and spirituality (he uses the Jesus fish with his named embedded in it as his logo. While it is easy to compare Ab-Soul to his TDE label mate Kendrick Lamar because both are socially conscious artists infuse into their music Ab-Soul is much more edgy than Kendrick, and thus similar to Lupe Fiasco in many respects.
For one they share similar views on politics. “Dear Barack, I know you just a puppet but I’m giving you props,” Ab-Soul line on Terrorist Threats pretty much analogous to Lupe’s, “Gaza strip was getting bombed Obama didn’t say shyt. That’s why I ain’t vote for him,” line on “Words I Never Said”. While they both have made some of the most thought provoking and controversial records in hip-hop, Ab-Soul has so far proven to be either completely uninterested or completely unable to make a pop hit akin to Lupe’s “Kick, Push” or “Superstar” (Lupe also made reference tracks for the songs, “Nothin’ on You” and “Airplanes” for Bruno Mars and B.o.B respectively). For better or for worse Ab-Soul’s inability (so far) to to flourish in the pop realm will likely prevent him from achieving Lupe’s super-star level fandom. However this doesn’t make him any less versatile. His collaborative Unit 6 project with R&B sensation JMSN was shelved by TDE but the pair do have a couple nice collaborations that have leaked to the public. He also calls on an array of producers from Corin Roddikk from the electronic music duo Purity Ring who produced “God’s Reign” to Mike Will Made-It who produced, “Womanogamy”. He consistently finds new sounds to use as the backdrop for his proclamations about society’s shortcomings and personal explorations of spirituality.
Freddie Gibbs (Gary, Indiana)
To be a successful rapper from a town with a population of less than 100,000 people is a quite a distinction in itself, but Freddie Gibbs might be the most lyrically adept gangster rapper of the modern era of hip-hop regardless of geography. While artists like Future glorify drug use, Gibbs looks at substance abuse more critically in his songs (“The Oxycontin and heavy syrup got me looking in the mirror saying ‘Is you a dope fiend or a dope boy?’”).
He does this without relinquishing any part of his gangster persona. If you listen to his catalogue you will learn very quickly that he has done a lot of bad things to get money and he has taken it to some levels that a lot of people simply wouldn’t go. While I greatly admire the work of all the rapper on this list, Gibbs might be the only one that has a legitimate case for having a top ten rap album of all time with Piñata. On this album he touches on such an incredible array of topics, it is truly a unique masterpiece. For instance, he raps with brutal honesty about serving his own family members crack, jokes about dropping out of college and majoring in home invasion, addresses his father’s tenure as a police officer, mentions discontent with his former boss Young Jeezy (and his view on the Jeezy/Gucci Mane beef), speaks about what it was like having a woman pregnant with his child while he was in prison and of course dedicates an entire track to his favorite wing spot, Harold’s. He does this all while collaborating with the legendary producer Madlib, who had prior to Piñata never worked with a rapper that would even really be considered in the same genre as Gibbs.
Doe B (Montgomery, Alabama)
Doe B was just beginning to realize his potential when he was murdered three years ago at the age of 22. The first rapper ever to have successful career from Montgomery, Alabama, he wore his signature eye patch as a result of an injury related to a shooting he survived in 2009. In his young life he had already signed to Grammy award winner T.I.’s Grand Hustle imprint and released a slew of successful mixtapes. Doe B, unlike so many one dimensional trap rappers, had a real split personality. He reminds me a lot of Kodak Black due to the fact that while the hit records he did have were comprised entirely of club bangers, on many of his deeper cuts he painted pictures of the harsh realities that he had endured (just like Kodak). For instance when he rapped, “have you ever been down so bad, that you don’t even wanna live?/Trying not to make this sound so bad/but that’s the way a n*gga feel when that last ounce go bad,” on “Dirt 2 Diamonds,” or when he sang “I woke up told my momma we gon see better days/She said she heard that same shyt yesterday,” on “Hood Memories”. His voice could either come through on a track as a monstrous bellow on braggadocious bangers such as “Kemosabe” or as soft, humble and soulful as it did on songs like “Street Dreams” or “Pray 4 Me” where he describes in vivid detail the circumstances that would ultimately lead to his death.
Sonically, his music is best described as a mix between Pimp C’s country rap tunes and Future’s autotuned trap ballads. His go to producer Karltin Bankz deserves a lot of credit for his success as well. He has tremendous talent and in my opinion has the potential to be as good as Lex Luger, Southside or any historically revered trap producer ever. His crowning achievement came in producing the best Doe B’s best song, the aforementioned “Hood Memories”, an auto-tuned symphony sent from heaven.
